sportling

English

Etymology

sport +‎ -ling

Noun

sportling (plural sportlings)

1. (poetic) A little person or creature engaged in sports or in play.
   • 1748, Ambrose Philips, Ode To the Honourable Miss Carteret:

     When again the lambkins play — Pretty sportlings, full of May.

Part or all of this entry has been imported from the 1913 edition of Webster’s Dictionary, which is now free of copyright and hence in the public domain. The imported definitions may be significantly out of date, and any more recent senses may be completely missing.
(See the entry for “sportling”, in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, Springfield, Mass.: G. & C. Merriam, 1913, →OCLC.)