Definition of "curvet" [cur•vet]

• A light leap by a horse, in which both hind legs leave the ground just before the forelegs are set down. (noun)
• To leap in a curvet. (verb-intransitive)
• To prance; frolic. (verb-intransitive)
• To cause to leap in a curvet. (verb-transitive)

American Heritage(R) Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition. Copyright (c) 2011 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

• "I can see my husband riding the margins of the field, talking to his land steward, and I kick Arthur into a rolling canter and come up to him in a rush that makes his own horse sidle and curvet in the mud."
• "Theogine's horse in Heliodorus [4846] curvet, prance, and go so proudly, exultans alacriter et superbiens, &c., but that such as mine author supposeth, he was in love with his master? dixisses ipsum equum pulchrum intelligere pulchram domini fomam?"
• "But gaining in speed; and gaining on him, slicing toward him in a wide curvet like hounds let loose on the side of a meadow, and he the fox already moving broadly down its middle."