curvet vs cut capers

curvet

verb
  • To fly or swim with darting movements. 

  • (of a person) To prance; to caper, frolic. 

  • Of a horse or, by extension, another animal: to leap about, to frolic. 

  • (of an object) To jump, skip, shake. 

  • To cause to leap about, dart or jump. 

noun
  • A prank; a frolic. 

  • A particular leap in which a horse raises both forelegs at once, equally advanced, and, as the forelegs are falling, raises the hind legs, so that all the legs are in the air at once. 

cut capers

verb
  • To engage in brief frolics, romps, or frantic, ridiculous dances. 

How often have the words curvet and cut capers occurred in a corpus of books? (source: Google Ngram Viewer )