[f. LEAP v.]
1. A boys’ game in which one player places his hands upon the bent back or shoulders of another and leaps or vaults over him. Also, a jump or leap of this description.
1599. Shaks., Hen. V., V. ii. 142. If I could winne a Lady at Leape-frogge, or by vawlting into my Saddle, with my Armour on my backe.
1672. Marvell, Reh. Transp., I. 15. Like fair gamsters at Leap-frog.
1797. Holcroft, Stolberg’s Trav. (ed. 2), III. lxxxvi. 402. They … exercised themselves at leap frog.
1834. M. Scott, Cruise Midge, xix. Massa Twig … clapping his hands on the old lady’s shoulders cleared her and her tub cleverly by a regular leap frog.
1854. Hawthorne, Eng. Note-Bks. (1883), I. 464. And ended … by jumping leap-frog over the backs of the whole company.
1888. Burgon, Lives 12 Gd. Men, I. i. 8. A double row of posts—where boys played leap-frog.
fig. 1704. Swift, Mech. Operat. Spirit, Misc. (1711), 299. There is a perpetual Game at Leap-Frog between both; and sometimes the Flesh is uppermost, and sometimes the Spirit.
1856. Mrs. Browning, Aur. Leigh, I. (1857), 35. We play at leap-frog over the god Term.
2. Croquet. (See quot.)
1874. J. D. Heath, Croquet-Player, 33. The Leapfrog or Jump Stroke. This may be called a ‘fancy’ stroke…. The object is, when a hoop or another ball is in the way of the striker’s ball, to make the latter jump over the obstacle.
Hence Leap-frog v., to leap or vault as at leap-frog (intr. and trans.). Leap-frogger, one who plays at leap-frog.
1872. G. Macdonald, Wilf. Cumb., I. xiii. 215. All I had to do was to go on leap-frogging.
1890. Pall Mall Gaz., 4 Jan., 2/1. Sometimes a too ambitious leap-frogger ruined his party by overbalancing and falling off.
1891. Kipling, Life’s Handicap, 210. He … tried to leapfrog into the saddle.
1894. Blackmore, Perlycross, xxxii. 329. Leap-frogged it [a tombstone], hundreds of times, when I were a boy, I have.
