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• perambulate •

Pronunciation: pêr-ræm-byê-layt • Hear it!

Part of Speech: Verb

Meaning: 1. (Intransitive) To wander or amble around, to stroll with no particular destination in mind. 2. (Transitive) To walk around something, to inspect an area on foot, as to perambulate a property before buying it.

Notes: Today's Good Latinate Word comes with an embarrassment of trimmings: perambulation, the action noun, perambulator, the personal noun (with that special meaning of "a baby carriage"), and a wide selection of adjectives: perambulatory, perambulant, or even the plain and ordinary perambulating.

In Play: Perambulating is walking, usually at a slow pace, without a destination: "Sir Cuitus is currently perambulating in the park—looking for his mind, I suspect." The noun perambulator refers to the vehicle that allows parents to perambulate with their babies. As those outside the US know, this word has been drastically shortened to pram: "Hon, the baby jumped out of the pram today and chased a dog down the street. Maybe he's outgrown it."

Word History: Today's Good Word comes to us from the Latin word perambulatus "walked through, about", the past participle of perambulare "to walk through, about", a verb comprising per- "through, about" + ambulare "to walk." The underlying verb here, ambulare , is, of course, also the source of English amble. Its present participle, ambulan(t)s "walking", became attached to mobile hospitals in French, where hôpital ambulant "field hospital" literally meant "walking hospital". Since ambulances are rather small mobile hospitals, the transference of this word to them was rather inevitable. (Without any perambulation, I would like to come directly to the point and thank Susan Ardith Lee for her suggestion of this very Good Word.)

Probably in other cities, too, but in Moscow it is quite possible to perambulate the city on either the Boulevard Ring or the Garden Ring. The latter might take a couple of days, though, as it's the further out of the two, and therefore much greater in circumference.

But wouldn't that be "circumambulate"? As in, "While in Vienna, I circumambulated the Bösendorfer piano factory."

Could a circumambulate be a subset of perambulate? Could all circumambulations be perambulations but not vice versa? If, for example, Slava were to walk half way around Moscow in a clockwise direction (city center to his right) and returned to his starting point in a counter clockwise direction (city center to his left), would it be a perambulation but not a circumambulation?

Aye to both. While what I wrote is true, circumambulate is the better word for what I was saying. For simple perambulation, I'd recommend the side roads within the Boulevard Ring. Not that I'd recommend going there any time soon, however.