Etymology: < Old French galop (apparently < galoper to gallop v.¹), which is found from the 11th cent. onwards, in early instances generally in the plural as accusative with verbs of motion (vint les galops, Chan. de Rol. 731). The word first appears in English in the 16th cent.; but the Old Northern French form *walop had been adopted in Middle English, and was used in the sense of ‘gallop’ as late as c1480.

Etymology: < French galoper, = Provençal galaupar , Spanish galopar , Portuguese galopar , Italian galoppare . No satisfactory origin has yet been suggested for these forms; the Provençal form suggests that the word may be a compound of the Germanic *hlaup-an to leap v., run, with some prefixed word. The initial must originally have been w ; the Old French *waloper verb, *walop noun, have not been found, but their existence is proved by the adopted forms, Flemish, Middle High German walop noun, Middle High German walopiren verb, Middle English walop noun, walope verb. The English verb walope , wallop v. I., survived into the 16th cent., when it was superseded by the present verb, apparently a new adoption < French galoper. In K. Alis. 461, Weber's ed. reads ‘The deor galopith by wodis side’, following the Lincoln's Inn MS. The earlier Bodl. MS., however, has galpeþ. The passage is not in the Anglo-Norman original by Thomas or Eustace of Kent. The reading of the Bodl. MS. is probably correct, but perhaps the reading of the later MS. may prove that the verb galope existed in 14–15th cent.

Etymology: Probably onomatopoeic; compare wallop n.Previous versions of the OED give the stress as: ˈgallop.