Learn English – Etymology for the phrase, “on a lark.”
etymology
What is the etymology for the phrase, "on a lark" or "for a lark?"
Best Answer
Both Wiktionary and Etymonline say that the origin of lark in the meaning "frolic, prank" is not clear. Wiktionary puts it like this:
Origin uncertain, either
from (notably northern) English dialect lake/laik (“to play”) (c.1300, from Old Norse leika (“to play (as opposed to work)”)), with intrusive -r- common in southern British dialect; or
shortening of skylark (1809), sailors' slang, "play roughly in the rigging of a ship", because the common European larks were proverbial for high-flying; Dutch has a similar idea in speelvogel (“playbird, a person of markedly playful nature”).
Under the definition ‘A fanciful name (usually plural) used of the fluttering sensations felt before any formidable venture, especially in . . . butterflies in the stomach’, the Oxford English Dictionary provides this as its earliest recorded use, in 1908, of the expression:
The three o'clock train going down the valley . . . gave him a sad
feeling, as if he had a butterfly in his stomach.
The plural form doesn’t occur until 1944:
There was no electrical response to the movement of that firmly gentle
hand, no butterflies on the backbone.
Only in 1955 does the expression as we know it today appear:
With butterflies in her stomach . . . she ascended the pretentious
flight of dirty marble steps.
The OED says this verb chicken is slang of US origin with a first quotation from 1943 (I. Wolfert, Torpedo 8):
I just wanted to..make sure you weren't chickening out on me.
They say this is a revived form coming from a noun chicken for one who is as timorous or defenceless as a chicken, used at least as early as 1616, and cite Shakespeare (Cymbeline 1623):
Forthwith they flye Chickens, the way which they stopt Eagles.
Best Answer
Both Wiktionary and Etymonline say that the origin of lark in the meaning "frolic, prank" is not clear. Wiktionary puts it like this: