Dictionary

deambulate en · VERB

Etymology

First attested in 1623; borrowed from Latin dēambulātus, perfect passive participle of dēambulō (“to walk, take a stroll”) (see -ate (verb-forming suffix)), from dē- + ambulō (“to walk”). The medical sense is likely a new denominal from deambulation or by translation from Romance languages such as French déambuler and Italian deambulare.

Meanings

1. (rare) To go out walking; to stroll.
   • I fell into a hall of resounding spaces and now I deambulate, stuck in the locked grooves of some recurring memories, getting over my damnatio memoriae of a city. 2012, Daniela Cascella, En Abime: Listening, Reading, Writing: An Archival Fiction, page 106:
   • —it was the time when the citizens of every single town pour into the streets and deambulate slowly for a couple of hours in a dense and complicated ebb and flow. 2010, Patrick Leigh Fermor, Mani:
   • His young slaves and the wives of the officers who were attached to his service put on the vestments of mourning and deambulated in the streets in the company of professional mourners who celebrated his funerary oration. 2015, Nadia Maria El Cheikh, Women, Islam, and Abbasid Identity, page 53:
   • Gabus designed and specified the vitrines for the FEMAN, which were constructed in Zurich and shipped and assembled in Dakar. Lit from within, standing tall in the space, they offered a place from which African citizens could deambulate around objects that had always in some sense looked at them from the other side of the vitrine, aptly witnessed from the gallery above. 2018, Lucia Allais, Designs of Destruction: The Making of Monuments in the Twentieth Century, page 191:
   • From this place we deambulate through several agreeable walks, among which Stepney Green is not the least interesting; 1815, Encyclopaedia Londinensis, Or, Universal Dictionary of Arts, page 450:
   • In the most populous thoroughfare of the last-named city, one may deambulate amid the fragrance of lilies, roses, and violets; and from the fascinating importunities of their graceful vendors, he may turn his eyes to the numerous statues which adorn the Piazza del Gran Duca. 1843 October, “An Extract From the Unpublished Diary of a Pilgrim”, in The Catholic magazine, volume 2, number 10, page 213:
2. To walk independently, especially in contrast to a state where one is physically unable to walk.
   • In classic testicular torsion, the patient presents with severe pain and usually cannot deambulate easily. 2011, Giuseppe Ocelle, Andrea Lissiani, Carlo Trombetta, “Acute Scrotal Pain: Management”, in Michele Bertolotto, Carlo Trombetta, editors, Scrotal Pathology, page 92:
   • Most patients with CLI [critical limb ischemia] have a tremendous disease burden with poor baseline function, including loss of ability to deambulate and ability to live independently in an abbreviated survival. 2016, Piergiorgio Cao, Paola De Rango, Massimo Lenti, “Clinical Presentation of Critical Limb Ischemia”, in Marc Bosiers, Peter Schneider, editors, Critical Limb Ischemia, page 16:
   • Runway: the ability of the animal to deambulate over a plane or inclined surface was examined. 2012, Eric Stalberg, Hari S. Sharma, Yngve Olsson, Spinal Cord Monitoring, page 170:
   • Figure 83.4 (a) Ischiopagus tetrapus (four legs) twins. […] (d) Patients at the age of 12: they deambulate normally and enjoy relatively normal lives. 2017, Juan A. Tovar, Leopoldo Martinez, “Conjoined twins”, in Prem Puri, editor, Newborn Surgery, page 824:

Forms

Relateds

deambulatory · amble · deambulation · ambulate