Etimology
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 (valgati, “amble, bound, leap, dance”). More at vagrant and whelk. Doublet of waulk.
verb
walk (third-person singular simple present walks, present participle walking, simple past and past participle walked)
(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.
(intransitive, colloquial, law) To "walk free", i.e. to win, or avoid, a criminal court case, particularly when actually guilty.
(intransitive, colloquial, euphemistic) 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.
(transitive) To travel (a distance) by walking.
(transitive) To take for a walk or accompany on a walk.
(transitive, baseball) To allow a batter to reach base by pitching four balls.
(intransitive) Of an object or machine, to move by shifting between two positions, as if it were walking.
(transitive) To cause something to move in such a way.
(transitive) To full; to beat (cloth) to give it the consistency of felt.
(transitive) To traverse by walking (or analogous gradual movement).
(transitive, aviation) To operate the left and right throttles of (an aircraft) in alternation.
(intransitive, colloquial) To leave, resign.
(transitive) To push (a vehicle) alongside oneself as one walks.
(intransitive) To behave; to pursue a course of life; to conduct oneself.
(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.
(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.
(transitive, informal, hotel) To move (a guest) to another hotel if their confirmed reservation is not available on day of check-in.
Examples
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.
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.
If you can’t present a better case, that robber is going to walk.
If you leave your wallet lying around, it’s going to walk.
I walk two miles to school every day.
The museum’s not far from here – you can walk it.
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.
I walk the dog every morning.
Will you walk me home?
I will rather trust […] a thief to walk my ambling gelding.
If we don't bolt the washing machine down, it's going to walk across the room.
I carefully walked the ladder along the wall.
I walked the streets aimlessly.
Debugging this computer program involved walking the heap.
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.
If we don't offer him more money he'll walk.
He will make their cowes and garrans to walk.
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.
We walk perversely with God, and he will walk crookedly toward us.
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".
her toung did walke / In fowle reproch.
I have heard, but not believed, the spirits of the dead / May walk again.
Come, doe you thinke, I'ld walke in any plot
Related words
synonyms
(move upon two feet): See Thesaurus:walk
(colloquial: go free): be acquitted, get off, go free
(be stolen): be/get stolen; (British) be/get nicked, be/get pinched
(beat cloth): full, waulk (obsolete)
antonyms
run
hyponyms
forwalk
walk away from
walk away with
walk in
walk into
walk off
walk on
walk out
walk over
walk tall
walk through
Etimology
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”).
noun
walk (plural walks)
A trip made by walking.
A distance walked.
(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.
A manner of walking; a person's style of walking.
A path, sidewalk/pavement or other maintained place on which to walk.
(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.
(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.
(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.
(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).
Examples
I take a walk every morning.
It’s a long walk from my house to the library.
The Ministry of Silly Walks is underfunded this year.
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.
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.
The pitcher now has two walks in this inning alone.
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.
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 […]
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.
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.
Related words
synonyms
(trip made by walking): stroll (slow walk), hike (long walk), trek (long walk)
(distance walked): hike (if long), trek (if long)
(manner of walking): gait
(path): footpath, path, (British) pavement, (US) sidewalk
hyponyms
cakewalk
catwalk
farmer's walk
intentional walk
perp walk
race walk
sidewalk
space walk / spacewalk
sponsored walk
whistle walk
coordinate terms
path
trail