Wiktionary

walk

See also: Walk and WalK

English

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A horse walking.

Pronunciation

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Etymology 1

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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

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

  1. (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.
    To walk briskly for an hour every day is to keep fit.
    • 1892, Walter Besant, “Prologue: Who is Edmund Gray?”, in The Ivory Gate […], New York, N.Y.: Harper & Brothers, […], →OCLC, page 16:
      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.
    • 1918, W[illiam] B[abington] Maxwell, chapter XXXIII, in The Mirror and the Lamp, Indianapolis, Ind.: The Bobbs-Merrill Company, →OCLC, page 257:
      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.
  2. (intransitive, colloquial, law) To "walk free", i.e. to win, or avoid, a criminal court case, particularly when actually guilty.
    If you can’t present a better case, that robber is going to walk.
  3. (intransitive, colloquial, euphemistic) Of an object, to go missing or be stolen.
    If you leave your wallet lying around, it’s going to walk.
  4. (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.
  5. (transitive) To travel (a distance) by walking.
    I walk two miles to school every day.
    The museum’s not far from here – you can walk it.
    • 1892, Walter Besant, “Prologue: Who is Edmund Gray?”, in The Ivory Gate […], New York, N.Y.: Harper & Brothers, […], →OCLC, page 16:
      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.
  6. (transitive) To take for a walk or accompany on a walk.
    I walk the dog every morning.
    Will you walk me home?
  7. (transitive, baseball) To allow a batter to reach base by pitching four balls.
  8. (intransitive, baseball, of a batter) To reach base by being pitched four balls.
  9. (intransitive) Of an object or machine, to move by shifting between two positions, as if it were walking.
    If we don't bolt the washing machine down, it's going to walk across the room.
  10. (transitive) To cause something to move in such a way.
    I carefully walked the ladder along the wall.
  11. (transitive) To full; to beat (cloth) to give it the consistency of felt.
  12. (transitive) To traverse by walking (or analogous gradual movement).
    I walked the streets aimlessly.
    Debugging this computer program involved walking the heap.
  13. (transitive, aviation) To operate the left and right throttles of (an aircraft) in alternation.
    • 1950, Flying Magazine, volume 46, number 3, page 18:
      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.
  14. (intransitive, colloquial) To leave, resign.
    If we don't offer him more money he'll walk.
  15. (transitive) To push (a vehicle) alongside oneself as one walks.
    • 1994, John Forester, Bicycle Transportation: A Handbook for Cycling Transportation Engineers, MIT Press, page 245:
      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.
  16. (intransitive) To behave; to pursue a course of life; to conduct oneself.
    • 1651, Jer[emy] Taylor, The Rule and Exercises of Holy Living. […], 2nd edition, London: […] Francis Ashe […], →OCLC:
      , page 35
      We walk perversely with God, and he will walk crookedly toward us.
  17. (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.
    • October 9, 1550, Hugh Latimer, sermon preached at Stamford, link
      I heard a pen walking in the chimney behind the cloth.
    • 1936, Rollo Ahmed, The Black Art, London: Long, page 32:
      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".
  18. (obsolete) To be in motion; to act; to move.
  19. (transitive, historical) To put, keep, or train (a puppy) in a walk, or training area for dogfighting.
  20. (informal, transitive) To move (a guest) to another hotel if their confirmed reservation is not available on the day of check-in.
  22. (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.)
Conjugation
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Conjugation of walk
infinitive (to) walk
present tense past tense
1st-person singular walk walked
2nd-person singular walk, walkest† walked, walkedst†
3rd-person singular walks, walketh† walked
plural walk
subjunctive walk walked
imperative walk —
participles walking walked

†Archaic or obsolete.

Synonyms
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Antonyms
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Hyponyms
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Derived terms
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Descendants
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  • Chinese Pidgin English: walkee
Translations
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The translations below need to be checked and inserted above into the appropriate translation tables. See instructions at Wiktionary:Entry layout § Translations.
Translations to be checked

Etymology 2

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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

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walk (plural walks)

  1. A trip made by walking.
    I take a walk every morning.
  2. A distance walked.
    It’s a long walk from my house to the library.
  3. (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.
  4. A manner of walking; a person's style of walking.
    The Ministry of Silly Walks is underfunded this year.
  5. A path, sidewalk/pavement or other maintained place on which to walk.
    Coordinate term: trail
    • 1902, John Buchan, The Outgoing of the Tide:
      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.
  6. (figurative) A person's conduct or course in life.
    • 1887, Sir Thomas Henry Hall Caine, Sir Hall Caine, John Parker Anderson, Life of Samuel Taylor Coleridge, page 136:
      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.
  7. (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.
  9. (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".
    The pitcher now has two walks in this inning alone.
  10. In coffee, coconut, and other plantations, the space between them.
  11. (Caribbean, Belize, Guyana, Jamaica) An area of an estate planted with fruit-bearing trees.[1]
    • 1755, William Belgrove, A Treatise upon Husbandry or Planting‎[2], Boston, page 14:
      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.
    • 1803, Robert Charles Dallas, The History of the Maroons, London: Longman and Rees, Volume 1, Letter 4, page 80:
      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 […]
    • 1961, Wilson Harris, The Far Journey of Oudin, Book 2, Chapter 6, in The Guyana Quartet, London: Faber and Faber, 1985, p. 150,[3]
      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.
    • 1995, Olive Senior, “Window”, in Discerner of Hearts‎[4], Toronto: McClelland & Stewart, page 66:
      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.
  12. (historical) A place for keeping and training puppies for dogfighting.
  13. (historical) An enclosed area in which a gamecock is confined to prepare him for fighting.
  14. (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.
  15. (colloquial) Something very easily accomplished; a walk in the park.
    • 1980, Robert Barr, The Coming Out Present (episode of Detective, BBC radio drama; around 16 min 20 sec)
      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.
  16. (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).
Synonyms
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Hyponyms
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Hyponyms of walk (noun)
Coordinate terms
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Terms related to walk (noun)
Derived terms
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Translations
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The translations below need to be checked and inserted above into the appropriate translation tables. See instructions at Wiktionary:Entry layout § Translations.
Translations to be checked

References

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  1. ^ Lise Winer (ed.), Dictionary of the English/Creole of Trinidad and Tobago, McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2008, p. 940.[1]

Anagrams

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Manx

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Etymology

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Borrowed from English waulk.

Verb

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walk (verbal noun walkal or walkey, past participle walkit)

  1. to full (cloth), waulk, tuck

Synonyms

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Derived terms

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Middle English

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Etymology 1

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From Old English ġewealc, from Proto-West Germanic *gawalk, *walk, from Proto-Germanic *walką.

Alternative forms

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Pronunciation

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Noun

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walk (uncountable)

  1. turning, tossing
  2. walk, journey
  3. walking, movement
  4. pathway, trail
Descendants
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References
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Etymology 2

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Verb

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walk

  1. Alternative form of wakien
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Etymology 3

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Verb

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walk

  1. Alternative form of walken

Polish

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Pronunciation

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  • IPA(key): /ˈvalk/
  • Rhymes: -alk
  • Syllabification: walk

Noun

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walk f

  1. genitive plural of walka
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