Definitions
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.
- noun One who roams or roves about, as in search of pleasure or amusement.
from The Century Dictionary.
- noun One who gads or walks idly about, especially from motives of curiosity or gossip.
- Gadding; rambling.
- noun A light square box-wagon, a substitute for the democrat.
from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.
- noun colloq. A gadder.
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.
- noun someone who
restlessly moves from place to place seekingamusement or thecompanionship of others
from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.
- noun a restless seeker after amusement or social companionship
Etymologies
Sorry, no etymologies found.
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Examples
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"gadabout," as they say, and spent a great part of her time amongst the kept women of the neighborhood, whose acquaintance she had made.
Bohemians of the Latin Quarter Henry Murger 1841
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It happened that the surgeon of McQuestion, who was something of a gadabout, was up on a gossip, and between them they proceeded to repair Leclère.
BÂTARD 2010
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Only not exactly gallivant, more like gadabout, playing an international game of tag with an imaginary, relentless and inexhaustible "it."
Omer Rosen: From Point A To Point A By Way Of Point A Omer Rosen 2011
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His own father, blithe gadabout Edward VII 1901-1910 was solely a horse racing buff who was oblivious to his subjects becoming, in his lifetime, suddenly and overwhelmingly enamoured with ball games.
Royalty has finally become wedded to the national sporting obsession | Frank Keating 2011
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Isabella Blow (1958-2007) certainly risks becoming a fashion footnote, remembered as a social gadabout (she once said that she needed publicity "like Jane Eyre needed Mrs. Rochester") and as the magazine editor who discovered the designer Alexander McQueen and the models Stella Tennant and Sophie Dahl.
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Elisabeth borrowed the “Debray” monicker from her ex-husband, the famed international gadabout and Che Guevara pal Régis Debray, the Bill Ayers of France.
Deconstructing Obama Jack Cashill 2011
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This woman will likely end up with a free McMansion with 15 bedrooms and two full-time maids, 7 nannies, a nice new short-bus and gadabout, free diapers, baby food, formula and paid college tuition for all the kids.
Baby Boom 2009
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Elisabeth borrowed the “Debray” monicker from her ex-husband, the famed international gadabout and Che Guevara pal Régis Debray, the Bill Ayers of France.
Deconstructing Obama Jack Cashill 2011
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First there was Wolverine: Prodigal Son, the Marvel/Del Rey book which attempted to "mangify" the character by turning him into a generic angsty shonen hero -- thereby robbing everything that made him interesting to begin with -- and now there's Iron Man: Armored Adventurers, which imagines Tony Stark not as gadabout playboy but nerdy youth.
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No longer Richmond Taylor, wealthy financier and gadabout, he now stood tall as that dark mystery of the night, that scourge of terror and nemesis to all evildoers: The Black Hand!
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