Word: walk Part of Speech: verb Etymology: From Middle English walk, walke, walken, walkyn, wolken (“to roll, toss, or turn; to walk; to move; to be living; to beat or full; to perform”), a conflation of Old English wealcan (“to move around; to revolve; to roll; to fluctuate; to discuss”) (ġewealcan (“to go, traverse; to roll”)) and Old English wealcian (“to curl, roll up, twist; to wrinkle”); both from Proto-West Germanic *walkan, from Proto-Germanic *walkaną (“to roll, toss, turn, wind; to walk, wander, wend; to full, trample”), *walkōną (“to roll about; to full”), from Proto-Indo-European *walg- (“to twist, turn, move”). Cognates Cognate with Bavarian woikn (“to full, tan; to knead dough; to roll out dough”), Cimbrian balchan (“to beat, hit, strike”), Dutch zwalken (“to walk around”), German walken (“to full, tan, walk; to knead; to beat up”), Danish valke (“to full, walk, waulk”), Faroese válka (“make dirty; stir up dirt”), Swedish valka (“to full cloth, to waulk”); also Latin valgus (“bent out; bandy, bow-legged”). More at vagrant and whelk. Doublet of waulk. Pronunciation: /wɔːk/, /waːk/, /woːk/, /wɔk/, /wɑk/ 1. 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. Labels: intransitive Example: To walk briskly for an hour every day is to keep fit. Example: 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. 2. To "walk free", i.e. to win, or avoid, a criminal court case, particularly when actually guilty. Labels: colloquial, intransitive Example: If you can’t present a better case, that robber is going to walk. 3. Of an object, to go missing or be stolen. Labels: colloquial, euphemistic, intransitive Example: If you leave your wallet lying around, it’s going to walk. 4. 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. Labels: intransitive 5. To travel (a distance) by walking. Labels: transitive Example: I walk two miles to school every day. Example: The museum’s not far from here – you can walk it. 6. To take for a walk or accompany on a walk. Labels: transitive Example: I walk the dog every morning. Example: Will you walk me home? 7. To allow a batter to reach base by pitching four balls. Labels: transitive 8. To reach base by being pitched four balls. Labels: intransitive 9. Of an object or machine, to move by shifting between two positions, as if it were walking. Labels: intransitive Example: If we don't bolt the washing machine down, it's going to walk across the room. 10. To cause something to move in such a way. Labels: transitive Example: I carefully walked the ladder along the wall. 11. To full; to beat (cloth) to give it the consistency of felt. Labels: transitive 12. To traverse by walking (or analogous gradual movement). Labels: transitive Example: I walked the streets aimlessly. Example: Debugging this computer program involved walking the heap. 13. To operate the left and right throttles of (an aircraft) in alternation. Labels: transitive Example: 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. To leave, resign. Labels: colloquial, intransitive Example: If we don't offer him more money he'll walk. Example: He will make their cowes and garrans to walk. 15. To push (a vehicle) alongside oneself as one walks. Labels: transitive Example: 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. To behave; to pursue a course of life; to conduct oneself. Labels: intransitive Example: We walk perversely with God, and he will walk crookedly toward us. 17. 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. Labels: intransitive Example: October 9, 1550, Hugh Latimer, sermon preached at Stamford, link I heard a pen walking in the chimney behind the cloth. Example: 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. To be in motion; to act; to move. Labels: obsolete Example: her toung did walke / In fowle reproch. Example: I have heard, but not believed, the spirits of the dead / May walk again. 19. To put, keep, or train (a puppy) in a walk, or training area for dogfighting. Labels: historical, transitive 20. To move (a guest) to another hotel if their confirmed reservation is not available on the day of check-in. Labels: informal, transitive 21. 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.) Labels: intransitive 22. To pull (a trigger) rapid-fire by alternating two fingers.