Beast Mode: An Ark of Animal Words: Hot to Trot: Animal Ambulation

Every animal propels itself a little differently, and many of those motions have become words that evoke a particular attitude or characteristic. Learning this list will give you some new lexical moves. Hop to it!
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Full list of words from this list:

words only definitions & notes
  1. amble
    walk leisurely
    A young bobcat ambled by the nearly abandoned administrative buildings, while ravens prattled and danced in the empty parking lots, and coyotes trotted along the valley’s empty roads and walkways. Los Angeles Times (Apr 13, 2020)
  2. canter
    a smooth three-beat gait
    With a bow in her left hand and an arrow in her right, she cantered her horse toward a target, aimed quickly and let fly. New York Times (Mar 23, 2020)
    Horses have four different natural gaits, each of which uses their legs in a unique order and pattern. From slowest to fastest, they are: walk, trot, canter, and gallop.
  3. flit
    move along rapidly and lightly; skim or dart
    Like moths drawn to light, they too flit aimlessly on their ledges, staring at empty streets at once familiar and foreign. The Guardian (Mar 28, 2020)
    The rapid, darting motions of some insects, or small birds like hummingbirds, are best described with flitting.
  4. flutter
    flap the wings rapidly or fly with flapping movements
    Or it might just be that the fluttering of bat wings at night strikes some anxious chord in most humans. New York Times (Mar 19, 2020)
    Slower than the buzzing of insect wings, fluttering is the motion or sound of quick but still distinct wing flaps.
  5. gallop
    a fast gait of a horse
    Also, that galloping robot is one of four horsemen of a mash-up apocalypse, whose chivalrous gear includes selfie sticks, tablet computers and Beats headphones. Washington Post (Apr 14, 2020)
    See canter above.
  6. gambol
    play or run boisterously
    He quit after two months and now hangs disconsolately around outside a low-cost, multistory migrant hostel where small children totter, kittens gambol and a handful of migrant workers chatter. Los Angeles Times (May 12, 2019)
  7. lope
    run easily
    Mrs. Frisby watched them as they loped away swiftly in single file and disappeared from her view, back into the deep forest and up the mountainside. Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH
    Lope comes from the same Old Norse root as leap, though it's more of a long, smooth stride than a jump.
  8. slither
    pass or move unobtrusively or smoothly
    Or change your perspective — get down low to see what's crawling, hopping, or slithering on the ground. Salon (Apr 11, 2020)
    Slithering really belongs to snakes, and snails and slugs, but anything that drags its belly on the ground when it crawls might be said to slither.
  9. steal
    move stealthily
    Arrangements were made for one of the posse to steal upon the cabin and plant the dynamite beneath it. Washington Times (Mar 8, 2020)
    If you steal something, you have to be sneaky, right? If you think about steal being closely related to stealth, as in stealth aircraft that are all but invisible to radar, that will give you a good sense of what stealing looks like as a motion: imagine a cat creeping up on its prey.
  10. strut
    walk in a proud, confident way
    I suggest you stop strutting around in that dumb-looking jacket and get some culture!” The Vanderbeekers of 141st Street
  11. swoop
    move down on as if in an attack
    Mourning doves wooed each other from the treetops, and a hawk made a few lazy swoops overhead. Washington Post (Apr 2, 2020)
  12. waddle
    walk unsteadily
    A stone-faced Caesar gestured from a pedestal as a lone goose waddled down the street, alongside the few passing cars. The Guardian (Apr 14, 2020)
    To waddle is to walk slowly, with a pronounced side-to-side motion, like a duck. It comes from wade as in "walk in water," with the association of fording a river or stream shallow enough that swimming is not required. Wade is interesting in that it originates in both Latin and German.
Created on Thu Apr 09 14:25:21 EDT 2020 (updated Thu Apr 23 11:16:52 EDT 2020)

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