Walk

Origin

Old English wealcan ‘roll, toss,’ also ‘wander,’ of Germanic origin. The sense ‘move around,’ and specifically ‘go around on foot,’ arose in Middle English.

• before 12th Century

Definitions

• 1a: an act of traveling or an excursion on foot: he was too restless to sleep, so he went out for a walk.

b. used to indicate the time that it will take someone to reach a place on foot or the distance that they must travel: the library is within five minutes' walk.

c. a route recommended or marked out for recreational walking.

d. a sidewalk or path.

e. a part of a forest under one keeper.

f. chiefly Brit. the round followed by a mail carrier.

• 2:a. an unhurried rate of movement on foot: they crossed the field at a leisurely walk.

b. the slowest gait of an animal.

c. a person's manner of walking: the spring was back in his walk.

• 3: in Baseball an instance of being awarded (or allowing a batter to reach) first base after not swinging at four balls pitched outside the strike zone.

Description

Walking (also known as ambulation) is one of the main gaits of locomotion among legged animals, and is typically slower than running and other gaits. Walking is defined by an 'inverted pendulum' gait in which the body vaults over the stiff limb or limbs with each step. This applies regardless of the number of limbs - even arthropods, with six, eight or more limbs, walk.

In the United Kingdom and Ireland, the term walking is used to describe both walking in a park or trekking in the Alps. However, in Canada and the United States the term for a long, vigorous walk is hiking, while the word walking covers shorter walks, especially in an urban setting.

It is theorized that "walking" among tetrapods originated underwater with air-breathing fish that could "walk" underwater, giving rise to the plethora of land-dwelling life that walk on four or two limbs. While terrestrial tetrapods are theorised to have a single origin, arthropods and their relatives are thought to have independently evolved walking several times, specifically in insects and crustaceans.

Judging from footprints discovered on a former shore in Kenya, it is thought possible that ancestors of modern humans were walking in ways very similar to the present activity as many as 1.5 million years ago.[1]