Lively and encouraging, though not winning

Usage examples of sportive.

I remember how I, invariably so taciturn, suddenly fastened upon Zverkov, when one day talking at a leisure moment with his schoolfellows of his future relations with the fair sex, and growing as sportive as a puppy in the sun, he all at once declared that he would not leave a single village girl on his estate unnoticed, that that was his DROIT DE SEIGNEUR, and that if the peasants dared to protest he would have them all flogged and double the tax on them, the bearded rascals.

Here again Johnson and Wilkes joined in extravagant sportive raillery upon the supposed poverty of Scotland, which Dr. Beattie and I did not think it worth our while to dispute.

The bees chose their flowers, the snub kids Upon hindlegs went sportive, or plied, Nosing, hard at the dugs to be filled: There was milk, honey, music to make: Up their branches the little birds billed: Chirrup, drone, bleat and buzz ringed the lake.

Perrot, short, broad, swarthy, dressed in rude buckskin gaudily ornamented, bandoleer and belt garnished with silver,--a recent gift of some grateful merchant, standing between the powerful black-robed priest and this gallant sailor-soldier, richly dressed in fine skins and furs, with long waving hair, more like a Viking than a man of fashion, and carrying a courtly and yet sportive look, as though he could laugh at the miseries of the sinful world.

Trident-bearing Neptune was there, and sportive tritons and fantastic nereids, and upon dolphins' backs was balanced a vast crenulate shell wherein rode the gay and awful form of primal Nodens, Lord of the Great Abyss.

Henry gestured, and his stewards brought two chests forward: silks, a magnificent fur-lined cape, silver plate and gold cups, handsome vestments for the Lavas clergy, rich clothing for Tallia and Alain, and brass dog collars embossed with springing roes and sportive hounds.

Her masts, the trunks of great longleaf pines from the virgin forests of Georgia, rose thirty-five metres above the black-mahogany deck and had a sportive rake.