most sportive

I have once more begun to compose with fresh vigour, and the Italian symphony makes rapid progress; it will be the most sportive piece I have yet composed, especially the last movement.

The walls were covered with arabesques, in various whimsical and beautiful designs—such as the sports of children; Loves balancing themselves on poles, or mounted on horseback, full of glee and mirth; Fauns and Satyrs; Mercury and Minerva; flowers and curling tendrils, and every beautiful composition that could suggest itself to a classic imagination in its most sportive mood.

Dame Nature does play strange freaks at times; and surely when she formed these white and “black and white” negroes, she must have been in one of her most sportive humours.

But with the Pygmies he was the most sportive, and humorous, and merry-hearted, and sweet-tempered old Giant that ever washed his face in a wet cloud.

It is imagined by the sailors that they are the most sportive just before a storm.