frolickings

Updated: May 22, 2025

But though he was so active in time of tempest, yet when his duty did not call for exertion, he was a remarkably staid, reserved, silent, and majestic old man, holding himself aloof from noisy revelry, and never participating in the boisterous sports of the crew. He resolutely set his beard against their boyish frolickings, and often held forth like an oracle concerning the vanity thereof.

Herman Melville - White Jacket: or, the World on a Man-of-War

Rumours about the private life of the Commodore in his cabin; about the Captain, in his; about the various officers in the ward-room; about the reefers in the steerage, and their madcap frolickings, and about a thousand other matters touching the crew themselves; all these forming the eternally shifting, domestic by-play of a man-of-war proved inexhaustible topics for our quidnuncs.

Herman Melville - White Jacket: or, the World on a Man-of-War