Meanings of sportive mood in English

Nature must have been in a sportive mood when she evolved the durian.

Fred shook it as he wished, though he was far from feeling in a sportive mood.

The spires of rock range about 3300 feet high, jumbled together by nature in a sportive mood.

Apart from her future husband, Monica was in a sportive mood, with occasional fits of exhilaration which seemed rather unnatural.

When the disciples saw the cup in the hands of the hilarious governor, and heard his playful words, they were not in a sportive mood.

In English literature Dryden is the writer who most recalls him, though rather in his higher than in his more sportive moods.

There is something primal, stupendous, in his grotesque characters which reminds us of the uncouth monsters that nature created in her sportive moods.