- a small brown bird with a pleasant song see also skylarkTopics Birdsc2
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- [usually singular] (informal) a thing that you do for fun or as a joke
- for a lark The boys didn't mean any harm—they just did it for a lark.
- (British English, informal) (used after another noun) an activity that you think is a waste of time or that you do not take seriously
- Perhaps this riding lark would be more fun than she'd thought.
Word Originnoun sense 1 and be/get up with the lark. Old English lāferce, lǣwerce; related to Dutch leeuwerik and German Lerche; of unknown ultimate origin. noun senses 2 to 3 and blow/sod that for a lark. early 19th cent.: perhaps from dialect lake ‘play’, from Old Norse leika, but compare with skylark in the same sense, which is recorded earlier.
Idioms
See lark in the Oxford Advanced American Dictionarybe/get up with the lark
- (British English, old-fashioned) to get out of bed very early in the morning
blow that for a lark
(also taboo sod that for a lark)
- (British English, slang) used by somebody who does not want to do something because it involves too much effort
- Sod that for a lark! I'm not doing any more tonight.
Check pronunciation:
lark