amble
/ˈamb(ə)l
/- The game is being played at walking pace at the moment and if the Italian players were ambling around any slower they'd be stationary.
- His mom, sister, and brother ambled about, along with his dad, walking with a cane and wearing a hearing aid.
- It was Damien, ambling at an easy pace on the sidewalk.
Synonyms
- Staying nearby in the creeper-fronted Hotel Raphael, we crossed the square each time we set out on or returned from our long ambles around the city.
- For instance, in the new building where my amble ended, walking among paintings which are themselves familiar, it's possible to feel a colder, rougher, emptier island which is unfamiliar.
- The shots rang out just after 11 on a sultry summer's evening, just as the last of the regulars were drifting away from the pub for a slow amble home.
Derivatives
ambler
/ noun ...- There are trails in Upper Wensleydale for a wide range of fitness and experience levels from garden-gate amblers to serious hill walkers.
- The streets of central Cairo, Luxor and Aswan are more secure for the ambler than those in the inner-city regions of many Western capitals.
- The tower now stands out, loud and proud, flanked by two green open parks and the colourful wharf, with a riverside walk guiding amblers up to its refurbished doors.
Origin
Middle English (originally denoting a horse's gait): from Old French ambler, from Latin ambulare 'to walk'.
ambulance from early 19th century:
First used in the Crimean War, an ambulance was originally a mobile temporary hospital—a field hospital—that followed an army from place to place. The term was later applied to a wagon or cart used for carrying wounded soldiers off the battlefield, which in turn led to its modern meaning. Ambulance comes from the French hôpital ambulant, literally ‘walking hospital’: the root is Latin ambulare, ‘to walk’, which gave us words such as alley (Late Middle English), amble (Middle English), and early 17th-century ambulate (a formal way of saying ‘walk’). Ambulance chaser is a wry nickname for a lawyer. The first example of the term, from 1897, tells us that ‘In New York City there is a style of lawyers known to the profession as “ambulance chasers”, because they are on hand wherever there is a railway wreck, or a street-car collision…with…their offers of professional services.’