Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • noun Any of various birds of the family Alaudidae, found almost worldwide and having a melodious song, especially the skylark.
  • noun Any of several similar birds, such as the meadowlark.
  • noun A carefree or spirited adventure.
  • noun A harmless prank.
  • intransitive verb To engage in spirited fun or merry pranks.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • To catch or hunt larks.
  • noun A small oscine passerine bird of the family Alaudidæ.
  • noun A bird like or likened to a lark, but not one of the Alaudidæ: with a distinguishing prefix: as, the titlark, meadow-lark, bunting-lark, bushlark, horse-lark, etc. Such birds are chiefly the titlarks or pipits (see Anthus), and various kinds of finches and buntings.
  • noun A kind of sandpiper.
  • To frolic; make sport; do anything in a sportive haphazard way.
  • noun A merry or hilarious adventure; a jovial prank or frolic; sport: as, to go on a lark.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • noun colloq. A frolic; a jolly time.
  • intransitive verb To catch larks.
  • intransitive verb colloq. To sport; to frolic.
  • noun (Zoöl.) Any one numerous species of singing birds of the genus Alauda and allied genera (family Alaudidæ). They mostly belong to Europe, Asia, and Northern Africa. In America they are represented by the shore larks, or horned larks, of the genus Otocoris. The true larks have holaspidean tarsi, very long hind claws, and, usually, dull, sandy brown colors.
  • noun (Zoöl.) a fringilline bird (Calamospiza melanocorys) found on the plains of the Western United States.
  • noun (Zoöl.) a sparrow (Chondestes grammacus), found in the Mississippi Valley and the Western United States.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • noun A romp, frolic, some fun.
  • noun A prank.
  • verb To sport, engage in harmless pranking.
  • verb To frolic, engage in carefree adventure.
  • noun Any of various small, singing passerine birds of the family Alaudidae.
  • noun Any of various similar-appearing birds, but usually ground-living, such as the meadowlark and titlark.
  • noun One who wakes early; one who is up with the larks.
  • verb To catch larks.

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • noun any of numerous predominantly Old World birds noted for their singing
  • verb play boisterously
  • noun any carefree episode
  • noun North American songbirds having a yellow breast
  • noun a songbird that lives mainly on the ground in open country; has streaky brown plumage

Etymologies

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

[Middle English laveroc, larke, from Old English lāwerce.]

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

[Short for skylark, to frolic, or alteration of dialectal lake, play (from Middle English leik, laik, from Old Norse leikr).]

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

Origin uncertain, either

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

From Middle English larke, laverke, from Old English lāwerce, lǣwerce, lāuricæ, from Proto-Germanic *laiwazikōn (compare West Frisian dialect larts, Dutch leeuwerik, German Lerche), from *laiwaz (borrowed into Finnish leivo, Estonian lõo).

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Examples

  • "I've suffered mor'n once from raids on my orchards and chicken coops, and found it was some town boys, off on what they called a lark, that made other people suffer."

    The Boy Scouts of Lenox Frank V. Webster

  • She had always been in a frolic of some sort, when I had known her in Davos, whither she had gone because she thought it would be "what you call a lark"; and she was in a frolic now, judging by her merry laughter when she saw me.

    The Princess Passes 1901

  • 'Depends on what you call a lark,' said Hazell; 'it's not much of a lark tearing down midstream like this in a fog.

    The Grand Babylon Hotel Arnold Bennett 1899

  • His companion was a man who delighted in what he called a lark, and whose only method of insuring a lark was by starting in with whiskey and keeping it up.

    Unleavened Bread Robert Grant 1896

  • He's a former hacker and current high school truant who has turned what he describes as a lark -- Chatroulette was intended to entertain his friends, he says -- into ambitions for storming Silicon Valley.

    Latest News - Yahoo!7 News 2010

  • He's a former hacker and current high school truant who has turned what he describes as a lark -- Chatroulette was intended to entertain his friends, he says -- into ambitions for storming Silicon Valley.

    Latest News - Yahoo!7 News 2010

  • The upside to this writing about games lark is that, every now and then, hobby and work mesh beautifully, and you end up with someone paying you to write about something fabulous, joyous, invigorating and fascinating.

    Imagination And Abstraction SVGL 2009

  • But many of us are Pro's even if this lark is not our primary way of making a living, and most writers have the same problem.

    Let Us Now Praise Famous Fen 2007

  • This no mail lark is really wearing, I hadn't realised quite how much I look forward to arriving home from work and finding out which books have arrived in the post.

    48 entries from October 2007 2007

  • This no mail lark is really wearing, I hadn't realised quite how much I look forward to arriving home from work and finding out which books have arrived in the post.

    Herbie, Joni and Kate 2007

Comments

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  • Hark! hark! the lark at Heaven's gate sings,

    And Phoebus 'gins arise,

    His steeds to water at those springs

    On chalic'd flowers that lies.

    - William Shakespeare, 'Hark, Hark The Lark'.

    November 17, 2008

  • Source of amusement

    July 8, 2014

  • Here in Hobart it's the name of a distillery, but I guess your definition works too.

    July 8, 2014