skip

skip vb Skip, bound, hop, curvet, lope, lollop, ricochet can all mean to move or advance with successive springs or leaps .The first three words are commonly referable to persons or animals but they may be used in reference to inanimate things.

Skip suggests quick, light, graceful movement and a continuous alternation of touching a surface and springing clear of it; often also when referred to living creatures it connotes sportiveness or excess of animal spirits

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wanton as a child, skipping—Shak.

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small yachts skipped here and there— Villiers

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Bound (see also JUMP) implies longer and more vigorous springs than skip and carries a stronger suggestion of elasticity and buoyancy of spirit

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like a roe I bounded o'er the mountains— Wordsworth

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I saw her bounding down the rocky slope like some wild, agile creature— Hudson

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the ball struck the earth and bounded across the field

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Hop suggests a less flowing or springy movement than the two preceding words; at times it connotes jerkiness and lack of dignity in movement. It implies a succession of small quick leaps (as of birds, toads, or grasshoppers)

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he does not waltz, he hops

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and in reference to children it suggests a jumping on one foot only

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chalked out a hopscotch game and began to hop around its squares— Dorothy Canfield

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Curvet may suggest a leap of a horse in which he raises both forelegs at once and as they are falling lifts both hind legs so that for an instant all his legs clear the surface, or in more general application it may imply frisking and gamboling or flightiness

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would you sell or slay your horse for bounding and curvetting in his course . . . ?— Cowper

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a gang of merry roistering devils, frisking and curvetting on a flat rock— Irving

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Lope evokes a picture of the long easy bounds of a lithe and agile animal (as a wolf or fox) on the run

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the long, loping stride of a mountaineer

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he progressed at an uneven pace, loping forward almost recklessly for many yards . . . then pausing fearfully for seconds— Mailer

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when it came time to feed them, he would . . . bang on the bottom of a tin pan; the fat cats would come loping up, like leopards, from all corners of the saloon— Joseph Mitchell

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Lollop, on the other hand, implies a clumsy, irregular bounding that suggests awkwardness or heaviness of movement

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its doors opened; out poured, lolloped, flopped a villainous crew, mostly foxhounds too old or too young— Punch

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the other buffalo also extricated itself from the slime and lolloped away— George Orwell

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Ricochet is referable almost exclusively to things which are thrown, shot, or cast. It suggests a skipping caused by a series of glancing rebounds after the object first strikes a surface

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the smaller the angle, under which a shot is made to ricochet, the longer it will preserve its force and have effect— Spearman

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fretting as her husband ricocheted from job to job— E. W. Pike

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our minds ricochet from the race problem to the housing problem, from the problem of foreign trade to the problem of displaced persons—C. W. Ferguson

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