leapfrog

Definition

A game, often played by children, in which a player leaps like a frog over the back of another person who has stooped over. One variation of the game involves a number of people lining up in a row and bending over. The last person in the line then vaults forward over each of the others until they reach the front of the line, whereupon they also bend over. The process is then repeated.

Etymology

From leap + frog.

Example Sentences

• "La Poſte (jeu d'Enfant) Skip-frog, or Leap-frog, a Boyiſh Play."
• "Are they [female students] not, indeed, generally wanting in that power of healthy stimulation which, exerted at proper intervals and sustained for proper periods, at once develops the mental powers, and sends forth the young boy-student from his Greek construing and his Latin hexameters to his leap-frog and cricket, with a zeal and an energy which he will never feel again when the school-room door has finally closed on him?"
• "Madame could read with native grace and commendable fluency, making nimble leapfrogs over the heads of the exceptionally hard passages, but Leam had to spell every third word, and then she made a mess of it."