verb. (colloquial).—1. To gad about with, or after, one of the other sex; to play the gallant; to ‘do the agreeable.’
1838. DICKENS, Nicholas Nickleby, ch. lxiv. You were out all day yesterday, and GALLIVANTING somewhere I know—you know you were!
1862. H. B. STOWE, in The Independent, 27 Feb. What business had he to flirt and GALLIVANT all summer with Sally Kittridge?
1886. HAWLEY SMART, Struck Down, xi. The ramparts is a great place for GALLIVANTING.
1863. H. KINGSLEY, Austin Elliot, i., 112. It’s them gals, Mr. Austin. Come in afore she sees you, else she’ll not be at home. She is GALLIVANTING in the paddock with Captain Hertford.
2. (colloquial).—To TRAPES (q.v.); to fuss; to bustle about.
1859. Boston Post, 10 Dec. Senator Seward is GALLIVANTING gaily about Europe. Now at Compiègne, saying soft things to the Empress and studying despotism, now treading the battle-field of Waterloo, then back at Paris, and so on.
1871. C. D. WARNER, My Summer in a Garden. More than half the Lima beans, though on the most attractive sort of poles, which budded like Aaron’s rod, went GALIVANTING off to the neighboring grape trellis.
1848. RUXTON, Life in the Far West, p. 145. The three remaining brothers were absent from the Mission … Fray Jose, GALLIVANTING at Pueblo de los Angeles.
1863. CAROLINE NORTON, Lost and Saved, p. 255. A pretty story, if, when her services were most wanted by the person who paid for them, she was to be gadding and GALLIVANTING after friends of her own.
1865. M. E. BRADDON, Henry Dunbar, ch. x. A pretty thing it would have been if your pa had come all the way from India to find his only daughter GALLIVANTING at a theaytre.
1870. London Figaro, 6 Dec. You’re never content but when you’re GALAVANTING about somewhere or other.
