Glossary terms
To walk about; to walk at a relaxed pace.
In the 1600s, anteambulate referred to walking in front of someone to show them the way, like an usher. Credits to Mark Peters.
Swedish word for feet. Translated it means “horses of the apostles” referring to the apostles traveling on foot.
The field of study of the architect-walker.
A person who walks with architecture in mind, and who thinks, moves and (re)configures the world accordingly.
From translations of the Greek playwright Aristophanes: It literally means to walk on the air, but actually means to walk as if on air. What a perfect word for buoyant sauntering, after, say, receiving good news. Credits to Mark Peters.
A method of walking and attending to experienced environment that is free, open and ‘without agenda’. Not to be confused with the idleness of flanerie or the intentions of attitudinal walking.
For walks/walking practices employing one or more conscious intentions or attitudes.
To be out at night, as in “to beat the paths/streets/roads till all hours of the night.” From the Dictionary of Newfoundland English (University of Toronto Press, 1982).
One who carries a heavy bag for another who is intent on spoiling a walk.
Cats aren’t known for clomping around like Clydesdales; they’re stealthy. That’s why cat-footing refers to walking that’s more subtle and graceful than that of the average oaf. In Harry L. Wilson’s 1916 book Somewhere in Red Gap, this word appears in characteristic fashion: “…I didn’t yell any more. I cat-footed. And in a minute I was up close.” Cat-footing is a requirement for a career as a cat burglar. Credits to Mark Peters.
A place to gaze. Conspectuses are viewpoints where the terrain opens itself naturally to the viewer, where the eye can thread in and out of the circle of hills, and names suggest a narrative sequence offering the possibility of beginning to know where you are. Traditional conspectus include suidhe (Gaelic, seat), used to view hunting.
Also known as corpse way, coffin route, coffin road, coffin path, churchway path, bier road, burial road, lyke-way or lych-way. “Now is the time of night, That the graves all gaping wide, Every one lets forth his sprite, In the church-way paths to glide” – Puck in Midsummer Night’s Dream. A path used in medieval times to take the dead from a remote parish to the ‘mother’ church for burial. Coffin rests or wayside crosses lined the route of many where the procession would stop for a while to sing a hymn or say a prayer. There was a strong belief that once a body was taken over a field or fell that route would forever be a public footpath which may explain why so many corpse roads survive today as public footpaths. They are known through the UK.
A gentle walk: Sall we geng fir a daander doon da rodd?
The process related to the practical collection of material, acting as post-walk data resource.
A Scottish version of a walk that drifts.
A term mostly used by town planners or architects to describe the short-cut paths created by people. So a path around a square ‘green’ will often have a desire path cutting off the corners. Town planners recognise them as an admission that the initial path was put in the wrong place. Called ‘Elephant Paths’ in some countries.
Walking in your sleep crying and bawling from a nightmare, as in “You were up with the ditties again last night.” from the Dictionary of Newfoundland English (University of Toronto Press, 1982).
To walk slowly, reticently, scuffing shoes on path, hold back in a belligerent way.
A mode of itinerancy which employs one of more tactics to interrupt any efficient journey from a to b; these tactics are often used as tools for playful debate, collaboration, intervention and/or spatial meaning-making.
To stroll casually and slowly along, to saunter, as in “I was dodgin’ on, happy as a lark.” from the Dictionary of Newfoundland English (University of Toronto Press, 1982).
Aimless wandering.
A walk with an open net.
Drawing with (vocal) sound in response to place while passing through place. Driftsinging borrows from the Situationist Drift, and Baudelaire’s flâneur. Driftsinging also relates to the process of ‘sounding,’ the sonic measuring of distance and depth that locates position in place and ‘echo location’, the examination of place through sonic reflection and refraction, resonance and echo.
To foreground the role of electronic technology in shifting the range and possibilities of cultural wandering.
As in “He’s got feet like an earl-footed turnip” (said of someone who walks with his feet turned out). from the Dictionary of Newfoundland English (University of Toronto Press, 1982).
A narrow gap in a drystone wall or rock face ie one a fat man would be foolish to try to get through. A number exist in the Lake District bearing that specific name but it is also a general term in Cumbria for any narrow gap.
A footstep: I widna geng a fitstramp owre da door efter her.
“Icelandic culture is infused with stories of travel. When names were needed for modern machines, the technology that enables our imaginations to travel, words were chosen that centred on the quality of roaming. Thus the neologism for laptop is fartölva, formed from the verb far, meaning to migrate, and tölva – migrating computer’; its companion, the external hard drive, is a flakkari. The latter word can also mean ‘wanderer’ or ‘vagrant’. In the end it’s the wanderers we rely on.” From Nancy Campbell’s “The Library of Ice”.
Means of transport by foot; or portable device exploited to encourage walking.
Actions that people engage in – including walking – extracted from everyday life and inspected in isolation. After the method of using ‘ready-made’ objects or ‘Found Objects’.
A jaunt, a rambling walk or ride just for the sake of breaking restraint. from the Dictionary of Newfoundland English (University of Toronto Press, 1982).
To walk: I’ll hae ta geng noo afore hit’s owre late.
Drawing practices using GPS devices. Previously a planned route is studied. Although the drawing is done in the physical space, the creation must be seen through the applications that show those records. Also called GPS Art.
Geo-poetic system was a term coined by Lucy Frears during locative media art research (published 2017). The basis of geopoetics, a theory and practice developed by Scottish philosopher and poet Kenneth White, is to connect humans to the lines of the earth (White cited in McManus 2007: 183), or ‘what’s out there’ (Ingold 1993; 154; White 2005: 200; White 2006: 9). The contact White describes is often between the human mind and the earth, what he calls ‘landscape-mindscape’ (Legendre 2011: 121). Because of the embodied nature of locative media experiences using a smartphone in landscape for these walking art experiences using gps technologies Frears expanded this notion to being ‘landscape-mindscape-bodyscape’ (2017).
Tactical, radical, creative, unusual and/or surprising geographies that challenge people to think differently about their relationships with places.
An eye rest.
Footsteps of another / alternative history.
Hybrid flaneur/flaneuse has become a performative “orchestrator” of steps and technologies – of sensory and emotional encounters. It is this oscillation between the poetic, the socio-technological, the geographical and the emotional that shifts the meaning of flanerie and walking in the 21st century. Hybrid flaneur/flaneuse can be also described in line with the cultural and aesthetic trajectories of the 20th century ambulatory practices. Therefore, a hybrid flaneur/flaneuse could be a creative merging of the romanticised view of early flaneur, the radical tactics and political implications of psychogeography and the performative/site-oriented elements of Fluxus and Land Art – all considered through a wide range of embodied media, social and geographical sensitivities.
Crossing a street or highway not at an official cross walk or signalled controlled junction; in North America it is an offence for which you can be fined.
Moving in a way so as to maintain distance between self and one or two other animals within view.
Cumbrian dialect term for ‘lane’ – but a quite specific lane. Lonnings are usually about half a mile long, low level and often with a farm at the end. Many have specific names known only to the local villagers. Hence, Bluebottle Lonning, Lovers Lonning, Fat Lonning, Thin Lonning, Squeezy Gut Lonning or Dynamite Lonning. In the north-east the spelling is lonnin and seems to refer more to an alley than a country lane. The Scottish equivalent is ‘loan’.
A memory of landscape or an illustrated poem.
To stroll, meander, as in “I thought I’d marl along to see you.” And “He’s always marreling down the road somewhere.” from the Dictionary of Newfoundland English (University of Toronto Press, 1982).
1. Cockney music hall song-walk ‘for me dear old Dutch’. 2. Two of us walking in an anything but straight line (me and ‘er).
A form of mindful movement. It uses the everyday activity of walking as a mindfulness practice to help you become more aware of the sensations in your body. By tuning into your environment and the sensations in your body as you walk, it can help you to focus on the present moment.
From Monty Python’s Flying Circus; a fictitious British government ministry responsible for developing silly walks through grants.
The practice of a mis-guide.
A person, book, map, etc. that frames a series of walks and points of observation and contemplation with a particular town, city or landscape – it often places the fictional, fanciful, fragile and personal on equal terms with tangible, municipal history.
Loiter in a bored or listless manner.
To loiter or walk aimlessly.
Psychogeography with more jokes.
Ambulant meetings.
If you sleepwalk, or just like to stroll about after dark, you have a tendency to noctambulate, or walk around at night. Credits to Mark Peters.
Back in the 1500s, nuddle had a few meanings that congregated low to the ground: To nuddle was to push something along with your nose or nudge forward in some other horizontal manner. By the 1800s, nuddle started referring to stooped walking, the kind of non-jaunty mosey in which someone’s head is hanging low. You can hear a touch of contempt in a phrase from an 1854 glossary by A. E. Baker: “How he goes nuddling along.” Credits to Mark Peters.
Yorkshire saying: ‘wait or slow down’.
Wandering without intent, meandering, walking with pleasurable aimlessness (English regional, esp. Lincolnshire; supposedly derived from the Norse word for “worm”). See also “stravaiging” (Scots), “daundering”, “pootling”, etc.
People who jog, run, and sprint have their share of problems that slow-moving people can barely comprehend. One is oversupination. As the OED defines it, to oversupinate is “To run or walk so that the weight falls upon the outer sides of the feet to a greater extent than is necessary, desirable, etc.” A 1990 Runner’s World article gets to the crux of the problem: “It’s hard to ascertain exactly what percentage of the running population oversupinates, but it’s a fraction of the people who think they do.” Credits to Mark Peters.
Repeatedly going over the same terrain, generally backwards and forwards, although there is no reason why it can’t be circular. Whether done in- or outdoors it is usually restricted to a small area. Can be done at any time of the day or night. Eg when trying to get or keep a newborn to sleep.
By de Certeau: In “Walking in the City”, de Certeau conceives pedestrianism as a practice that is performed in the public space, whose architecture and behavioural habits substantially determine the way we walk. For de Certeau, the spatial order “organises an ensemble of possibilities (e.g. by a place in which one can move) and interdictions (e.g. by a wall that prevents one from going further)” and the walker “actualises some of these possibilities” by performing within its rules and limitations. “In that way,” says de Certeau, “he makes them exist as well as emerge.” Thus, pedestrians, as they walk conforming to the possibilities that are brought about by the spatial order of the city, constantly repeat and re-produce that spatial order, in a way ensuring its continuity. But, a pedestrian could also invent other possibilities. According to de Certeau, “the crossing, drifting away, or improvisation of walking privilege, transform or abandon spatial elements.” Hence, the pedestrians could, to a certain extent, elude the discipline of the spatial order of the city. Instead of repeating and re-producing the possibilities that are allowed, they can deviate, digress, drift away, depart, contravene, disrupt, subvert, or resist them. These acts, as he calls them, are pedestrian acts.
This word has been around since the mid-1800s. Here it is in an 1864 issue of the journal Notes & Queries: “I have been pedestrianating through a corner of Oxfordshire.” Credits to Mark Peters.
A highly influential ideologue of neorealism, scriptwriter and director Cesare Zavattini suggested “pedinare,” the Italian word for stalking or shadowing, as a technique for filmmaking. Pedinare in cinema entailed “tailing someone like a detective, not determining what the character does but seeking to find out what is about to ensue.” The etymology of the word in Italian suggests “legwork” as it is derived from the Italian word for foot, “piede.” It is possible to suggest that the proliferation of images of walking in Italian Neorealism is closely linked to the technique of pedinamento, not because all neorealist filmmakers were followers of Zavattini, but because going out onto the street to encounter the everyday life of post-war Italian cities and creating cinematic tools to articulate these encounters were major concerns for the filmmakers of that era.
Projects and events around walking with prams, pushchairs and buggies (etc.). Instigated by artist Clare Qualmann.
The experience of a place informed by the meanings of place-names, ecology, ecopoetics, etc.
The Scottish and English word plodging has been wading through the lexical muck and mire since the late 1700s, and it refers to icky, slow, molasses-type walking. Plodge is probably a variation of plod. This word isn’t totally out of use, as a 1995 use from British magazine The Countryman illustrates: “Northbound Pennine Wayfarers, plodging through the interminable peat-bogs of the North Pennines.” Even if you have a spring in your step, it’s tough to skip merrily through the peat-bogs. Credits to Mark Peters.
A descriptive walk done on behalf of a person who is bed/house-bound with illness in a landscape they recall.
Invented by locals in Barcelona to describe walking and hanging out in the area of Raval, exploring the barrio, taking a coffee, experiencing pride in this most diverse area of the city. and contributing to the inclusive, dynamic neighborhood that is home to many immigrants. The verb was promoted by Fundacio Tot Raval and the City Council.
Spanish word that means to register, look carefully, walk from one part to another, to find out what you want to know or find.
A slow, leisurely walk that encourages musing or a sense of wonder (see attested Middle English etymology).
On a slant, as in “Walk scow-ways across the street as slow as you can and dare them to hit you.” from the Dictionary of Newfoundland English (University of Toronto Press, 1982).
To move slowly or with difficulty; to walk in a clumsy, awkward manner. from the Dictionary of Newfoundland English (University of Toronto Press, 1982).
To squeak or creak, like new shoes or boots, as in “The scrooping of new ‘Sunday’ boots gave a great pleasure to the wearers while walking into church because it indicated a degree of prosperity.” from the Dictionary of Newfoundland English (University of Toronto Press, 1982).
To work or walk hurriedly. from the Dictionary of Newfoundland English (University of Toronto Press, 1982).
A wandering condition, a drifting or vagabond state, as in “He’s gone on the shogarawn.” from the Dictionary of Newfoundland English (University of Toronto Press, 1982).
Since the 1500s, shoggle has been a word for various sorts of shaking. No wonder it became a word for unsteady walking in the 1800s. Zombies and toddlers are big shogglers. Another term sometimes applied to such precarious ambling is warpling. Credits to Mark Peters.
To hurry about in search of something, to take a short walk, to hike. “Send out horses, skir the country round.” (Shakespeare, Macbeth.)from the Dictionary of Newfoundland English (University of Toronto Press, 1982).
To saunter, to be slovenly (The Dialect of Cumberland – Robert Ferguson, 1873). Rarely used in Cumbria now but has a meaning of to walk slowly, to amble, to walk with no particular purpose. Used for example in the ballad Billy Watson’s Lonnin written by Alexander Craig Gibson of Harrington, Cumbria in 1872 “Yan likes to trail ow’r t’ Sealand-fields an’ watch for t’ commin’ tide, Or slare whoar t’Green hes t’ Ropery an’ t’ Shore of ayder side “(Translation: One likes to trail over to Sealand Fields and watch for the coming tide, Or slare over to where the Green has the ropery and the Shore on the other side) Billy Watson’s Lonning (lonning – dialect for lane) still exists and can be found at Harrington, Cumbria.
A short walk or stroll, as in “I’ll take a slew around the harbour before going to bed.” from the Dictionary of Newfoundland English (University of Toronto Press, 1982).
To slink off or about, to idle, to loaf, as in “They were never working—always slingin’ about.” from the Dictionary of Newfoundland English (University of Toronto Press, 1982).
A marathon length walk in Huntly/Aberdeenshire and other places, where people can walk as slow as they like. Celebrating the human pace, it is both an endurance event as well as a poetic act that brings together friendship, physical activity and an appreciation of our varied landscapes.
These fanciful-sounding words have no definitive origin: They probably just sounded right to someone who was sauntering, which is what they both mean. An Oxford English Dictionary (OED) example from 1821 describes someone “soodling up and down the street.” Credits to Mark Peters.
A kind of attentive walking in which heightened sense of the moment creates the feeling of sneaking, like a cat stalking prey.
The first sense of snudging refers to being cheap, stingy, miserly, and Scrooge-like. Such penny-pinching behavior isn’t associated with great posture, and perhaps that’s why the word later referred to walking with a bit of a stoop. An English-French dictionary from 1677 captures the essence of snudgery: “To Snudge along, or go like an old Snudge, or like one whose Head is full of business.” Snudging is a little like trudging. Credits to Mark Peters.
To walk slowly and heavily along, as in “I must soak home and get a bite to eat.” from the Dictionary of Newfoundland English (University of Toronto Press, 1982).
Bare feet, as in “walking on one’s softs.” from the Dictionary of Newfoundland English (University of Toronto Press, 1982).
To walk slowly and in a leisurely fashion, as in “The old man was just soggin’ along.” from the Dictionary of Newfoundland English (University of Toronto Press, 1982).
Interested in walking their socks (and shoes off) and at the end of the journey tries to swap for another, brand new or slightly used pair.
Pigeon-toed person. from the Dictionary of Newfoundland English (University of Toronto Press, 1982).
To wear down a heel so that the boot or shoe is mis-shapen, as in “The heels on his boots were squoiled down.” from the Dictionary of Newfoundland English (University of Toronto Press, 1982).
To walk stiffly and slowly: When ower da crö da sun wis high, Oot staagin cam da Setter kye.
To walk silently and sneak about, as in steeving around. from the Dictionary of Newfoundland English (University of Toronto Press, 1982).
To walk with long, purposeful strides: Here’s Robbie comin stendin up da rodd.
To walk firmly: Dere dey wir, strampin back an fore.
To drag along the ground, to trail or hang untidily, as in “He was streelin’ along behind us all the way home.” from the Dictionary of Newfoundland English (University of Toronto Press, 1982).
Do you like to stroll? Are you a fan of roaming? Then you should give stroaming a try. This is a word blend, just like brunch. In her 1796 novel Camilla, Frances Burney described a character who “stroamed into the ball-room, with the most visible marks of his unfitness for appearing in it.” The OED indicates that stroaming involves “long strides” and/or idleness, so watch your form and attitude when out on a stroam. Credits to Mark Peters.
The artist walks like a „Flâneur“ through the city. He does not have a turtle with him (as the original Parisian Flâneur of the 1830‘s used to); later, he does not write stories, he does not write poems. He has only a video camera. He takes shots of the city; he takes shots of the “life” of the people of the city, sometimes he also shoots “himself” (…without camera moves, without zooming, without special lighting, with original sound, without permission); Later he chooses and combines the scenes, Installs and presents them online, offline, on site or off site, always under different contexts.
A peripatetic school for the human pace – it explores, researches and celebrates the human pace by bringing walking and other journeying activities together with arts and other cultural disciplines and people from all walks of life.
Wandering, getting side tracked, following the breeze, stalking a butterfly, wondering a lot, being completely in the transient moment.
A field of activist performance that utilises walking and moving and talking in rural landscapes to address issues of environmental, social or political concern (Jess Allen).
A drawing made on an outside environment, trafitti combines the word “graffiti”, to inscribe a surface, “trace” (which itself combines the meanings track, to make ones way, and to draw), and “traffic”, the passage of people or vehicles in transit, or the conveyance of messages or data through a communications system.
Walk: He’s traivelled mony a lang gaet.
To walk, tread, or step especially heavily.
One who enjoys vistas and views, see ‘tourist’.
Walking and talking (often employed during a walkshop).
Vocal Orientation And Navigation Through development and practice of Driftsinging.
To walk or tramp, as in “I’m going to vamp on home soon.” from the Dictionary of Newfoundland English (University of Toronto Press, 1982).
A walk for the chronically ill.
As far as the moment sees.
As far as the day goes.
A library filled with books suggested as good to take for a walk. (Deirdre Heddon & Misha Myers, 2012)
Travelling on foot nearby and/or along the Elan Valley Aqueduct.
A workshop with walking at its focus.
When the mind & body are casting about together, questioning encountering & discovering.
A journey which will include walking as an essential component, the object of is to become lost.
To twist and turn.
A kind of attitudinal or intentional walk in which one chooses a zig-zag pathway, choosing a feature in the environment to walk towards and changing chosen feature and direction at will. A way to subvert prescribed directionality, and view, of built urban pathways.