walk

To walk briskly for an hour every day is to keep fit.

Athelstan Arundel walked home all the way, foaming and raging. […] His mother lived at Pembridge Square, which is four good measured miles from Lincoln's Inn. He walked the whole way, walking through crowds, and under the noses of dray-horses, carriage-horses, and cart-horses, without taking the least notice of them.

1892, Walter Besant, “Prologue: Who is Edmund Gray?”, in The Ivory Gate […], New York, N.Y.: Harper & Brothers, […], →OCLC, page 16:

Edward Churchill still attended to his work in a hopeless mechanical manner like a sleep-walker who walks safely on a well-known round. But his Roman collar galled him, his cossack stifled him, his biretta was as uncomfortable as a merry-andrew's cap and bells.

1918, W[illiam] B[abington] Maxwell, chapter XXXIII, in The Mirror and the Lamp, Indianapolis, Ind.: The Bobbs-Merrill Company, →OCLC, page 257:

(intransitive) To move on the feet by alternately setting each foot (or pair or group of feet, in the case of animals with four or more feet) forward, with at least one foot on the ground at all times. Compare run.

If you can’t present a better case, that robber is going to walk.

(intransitive, colloquial, law) To "walk free", i.e. to win, or avoid, a criminal court case, particularly when actually guilty.

If you leave your wallet lying around, it’s going to walk.

(intransitive, colloquial, euphemistic) Of an object, to go missing or be stolen.

Of an object, to go missing or be stolen.

(intransitive, cricket, of a batsman) To walk off the field, as if given out, after the fielding side appeals and before the umpire has ruled; done as a matter of sportsmanship when the batsman believes he is out.

I walk two miles to school every day.

The museum’s not far from here – you can walk it.

(transitive) To travel (a distance) by walking.

I walk the dog every morning.

Will you walk me home?

I will rather trust[…]a thief to walk my ambling gelding.

c. 1597 (date written), William Shakespeare, “The Merry Wiues of Windsor”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, →OCLC, [Act II, scene ii], page 47:

(transitive) To take for a walk or accompany on a walk.

To take for a walk or accompany on a walk.

(transitive, baseball) To allow a batter to reach base by pitching four balls.

(intransitive, baseball, of a batter) To reach base by being pitched four balls.

To reach base by being pitched four balls.

If we don't bolt the washing machine down, it's going to walk across the room.

(intransitive) Of an object or machine, to move by shifting between two positions, as if it were walking.

I carefully walked the ladder along the wall.

(transitive) To cause something to move in such a way.

To cause something to move in such a way.

(transitive) To full; to beat (cloth) to give it the consistency of felt.

I walked the streets aimlessly.

Debugging this computer program involved walking the heap.

(transitive) To traverse by walking (or analogous gradual movement).

Still keeping his tail in the air, Red coaxed the “Airknocker” ahead and as we grasped his struts he slowly retarded the throttle. We walked the plane between two tiedown blocks and not until we had tied the struts did Red cut the switch.

1950, Flying Magazine, volume 46, number 3, page 18:

(transitive, aviation) To operate the left and right throttles of (an aircraft) in alternation.

If we don't offer him more money he'll walk.

He will make their cowes and garrans to walk.

1596 (date written; published 1633), Edmund Spenser, A Vewe of the Present State of Irelande […], Dublin: […] Societie of Stationers, […], →OCLC; republished as A View of the State of Ireland […] (Ancient Irish Histories), Dublin: […] Society of Stationers, […] Hibernia Press, […] [b]y John Morrison, 1809, →OCLC, page 39:

(intransitive, colloquial) To leave, resign.

The county had a successful defense only because the judge kept telling the jury at every chance that the cyclist should have walked his bicycle like a pedestrian.

1994, John Forester, Bicycle Transportation: A Handbook for Cycling Transportation Engineers, MIT Press, page 245:

(transitive) To push (a vehicle) alongside oneself as one walks.

We walk perversely with God, and he will walk crookedly toward us.

(intransitive) To behave; to pursue a course of life; to conduct oneself.

October 9, 1550, Hugh Latimer, sermon preached at Stamford, link
I heard a pen walking in the chimney behind the cloth.

There have been reports of cases where, in the event of a girl having died, a man was chosen to go through the marriage ceremony and even have intercourse with the body, before burial, so that she might not "walk".

1936, Rollo Ahmed, The Black Art, London: Long, page 32:

(intransitive) To go restlessly about; said of things or persons expected to remain quiet, such as a sleeping person, or the spirit of a dead person.

her toung did walke / In fowle reproch.

1590, Edmund Spenser, “Book II, Canto IV”, in The Faerie Queene. […], London: […] [John Wolfe] for William Ponsonbie, →OCLC, stanza 5, page 233:

I have heard, but not believed, the spirits of the dead / May walk again.

c. 1610–1611 (date written), William Shakespeare, “The Winters Tale”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, →OCLC, [Act III, scene iii], page 288:

Come, doe you thinke, I'ld walke in any plot

1611, Ben[jamin] Jonson, Catiline His Conspiracy, London: […] [William Stansby?] for Walter Burre, →OCLC, Act III:

(obsolete) To be in motion; to act; to move.

(transitive, historical) To put, keep, or train (a puppy) in a walk, or training area for dogfighting.

(informal, transitive) To move (a guest) to another hotel if their confirmed reservation is not available on the day of check-in.

(machining, intransitive, of a tool, such as a drill bit or reamer) To tend to move radially while feeding axially, whether tending toward on-center or tending toward off-center. Walking may be desirable (e.g., when a reamer walks into concentricity) or undesirable (e.g., when a twist drill walks into eccentricity.)

en-verb

walk (third-person singular simple present walks, present participle walking, simple past and past participle walked)

walks (present singular third-person)
walking (participle present)
walked (participle past)
walked (past)
walk (infinitive)

Chinese Pidgin English: walkee

gå fri

colloquial: to avoid a criminal court case

raccompagner

someone, back to their starting point, usually home

aya

baseball: to allow to advance after four balls

kävelyttää

move something by shifting between two positions

voltar

to traverse by walking (or analogous gradual movement)

From Middle English walken (“to move, walk, roll, turn, revolve, toss”), a conflation of Old English wealcan (“to move round, revolve, roll, turn, toss”) (ġewealcan (“to go, traverse”)) and Old English wealcian (“to curl, roll up”); both from Proto-West Germanic *walkan, from Proto-Germanic *walkaną, *walkōną (“to twist, turn, roll about, full”), from Proto-Indo-European *walg- (“to twist, turn, move”).
Cognate with Scots walk (“to walk”), Saterland Frisian walkje (“to full; drum; flex; mill”), West Frisian swalkje (“to wander, roam”), Dutch walken (“to full, work hair or felt”), Dutch zwalken (“to wander about”), German walken (“to flex, full, mill, drum”), Danish valke (“to waulk, full”), Latin valgus (“bandy-legged, bow-legged”), Sanskrit वल्गति (válgati, “amble, bound, leap, dance”). More at vagrant and whelk. Doublet of waulk.

inh

to move, walk, roll, turn, revolve, toss

to move round, revolve, roll, turn, toss

Old English wealcian (“to curl, roll up”)

der

Proto-Indo-European *walg- (“to twist, turn, move”)

cog

West Frisian swalkje (“to wander, roam”)

Dutch walken (“to full, work hair or felt”)

German walken (“to flex, full, mill, drum”)

Latin valgus (“bandy-legged, bow-legged”)


walk

I take a walk every morning.

It’s a long walk from my house to the library.

(sports) An Olympic Games track event requiring that the heel of the leading foot touch the ground before the toe of the trailing foot leaves the ground.

The Ministry of Silly Walks is underfunded this year.

A manner of walking; a person's style of walking.

Coordinate term: trail

And then it appeared to the young man that he was walking his love up the grass walk of Heriotside, with the house close by him.

1902, John Buchan, The Outgoing of the Tide:

A path, sidewalk/pavement or other maintained place on which to walk.

Men like Stuart who had no desire to extol Coleridge's virtues, and other witnesses quite as hostile, to whom a moral dereliction could hardly be a mortal offence, were loud in praise of the purity of his walk in life.

1887, Sir Thomas Henry Hall Caine, Sir Hall Caine, John Parker Anderson, Life of Samuel Taylor Coleridge, page 136:

(figurative) A person's conduct or course in life.

(poker) A situation where all players fold to the big blind, as their first action (instead of calling or raising), once they get their cards.

The pitcher now has two walks in this inning alone.

(baseball) An award of first base to a batter following four balls being thrown by the pitcher; known in the rules as a "base on balls".

In coffee, coconut, and other plantations, the space between them.

Twenty Acres of Land well kept in a Plantain Walk, will afford a very considerable Support, as Plantains are as hearty a Food as Eddoes, and the Plantain Walk may be a Nursery for declining Slaves, as well as to fatten old Cattle when they are past Labour.

1755, William Belgrove, A Treatise upon Husbandry or Planting, Boston, page 14:

For half a mile from Vaughansfield the road, now a mere track, leads through pastures and a coffee-walk to the foot of a very steep hill […]

1803, Robert Charles Dallas, The History of the Maroons, London: Longman and Rees, Volume 1, Letter 4, page 80:

1961, Wilson Harris, The Far Journey of Oudin, Book 2, Chapter 6, in The Guyana Quartet, London: Faber and Faber, 1985, p. 150,
One day he knew he would build this identical palace for himself. Not next to the road like now—where the present cottage was—but half a mile inside the coconut walk.

He couldn’t sleep and took to walking outside at night, to look at the stars, to feel the cool air, and for a long time wasn’t even conscious that he always ended up standing in the darkness of the cocoa walk staring at the shutters of Bridget’s room.

1995, Olive Senior, “Window”, in Discerner of Hearts, Toronto: McClelland & Stewart, page 66:

(Caribbean, Belize, Guyana, Jamaica) An area of an estate planted with fruit-bearing trees.

(historical) A place for keeping and training puppies for dogfighting.

(historical) An enclosed area in which a gamecock is confined to prepare him for fighting.

(graph theory) A sequence of alternating vertices and edges, where each edge's endpoints are the preceding and following vertices in the sequence. Compare path, trail.

And for the strongroom itself, he can tell us where to find the combination of the day. We had allowed four hours, Joe, but with this help, once you get us inside, it's a walk! I've been timing it.

1980, Robert Barr, The Coming Out Present (episode of Detective, BBC radio drama; around 16 min 20 sec)

(colloquial) Something very easily accomplished; a walk in the park.

(UK, finance, slang, dated) A cheque drawn on a bank that was not a member of the London Clearing and whose sort code was allocated on a one-off basis; they had to be "walked" (hand-delivered by messengers).

kulku

graph theory: a sequence of alternating vertices and edges

From Middle English walk, walke, walc, from Old English *wealc (as in Old English wealcspinl) and ġewealc (“a rolling motion, attack”), from Proto-Germanic *walką. Cognate with Icelandic válk (“a rolling around, a tossing to and fro, trouble, distress”).