Vixen / Gambol / Blithe

Vixen, noun.

1: a shrewish ill-tempered woman.

2: a female fox.

3: a sexually attractive woman.

-vixenish, adjective.

[Origin: Middle English (Southern dialect) *vixen, alteration of Middle English fixen, from Old English fyxe, feminine of fox.]

(1590)

“The Fox was just that, a monstrous fox: five hundredweight or more of tense power, quick as an arrow, straight as a javelin, bright as a new-polished sword-blade, and female as Eve; Hob could see immediately that it was a vixen. Tall and deadly and graceful: the Goddess of the Foxes.”

Gambol, intransitive verb -boled or -bolled; -boling or -bolling. To skip about in play, to frisk, frolic.

Gambol, noun: a skipping or leaping about in play.

[Origin: modification of Middle French gambade spring of a horse, gambol, probably from Old Occitan camba leg, from Late Latin.]

(1508-10)

“Through Hob’s frozen terror a thought came faintly to him: it was gamboling, it was playing at slaughter.”

Blithe, adjective.

1: of a happy lighthearted character or disposition.

2: lacking due thought or consideration: casual, heedless: blithe unconcern.

-blithely, adverb.

[Origin: Middle English, from Old English blīthe; akin to Old High German Blīdi joyous.]

(Before 12th Century)

“The Fox sprang from place to place, blithe as a new lamb, and each leap left a mortally wounded man behind. Now and again it would pause to survey its accomplishments, and then the crimson tongue would loll out over serried teeth, and Hob felt that it was laughing.”

All from Something Red, by Douglas Nicholas.