Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • noun A gait of a horse, faster than a canter, in which all four feet are off the ground at the same time during each stride.
  • noun A fast running motion of other quadrupeds.
  • noun A ride taken at a gallop.
  • noun A rapid pace.
  • noun Medicine A disordered rhythm of the heart characterized by three or four distinct heart sounds in each cycle and resembling the sound of a galloping horse.
  • intransitive verb To cause to gallop.
  • intransitive verb To go or move at a gallop.
  • intransitive verb To move or progress swiftly.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun A leaping or springing gait or movement of horses (or other quadrupeds), in which the two fore feet are lifted from the ground in succession, and then the two hind feet in the same succession.
  • noun A ride at a gallop; the act of riding an animal on the gallop.
  • noun A kind of dance. See galop.
  • To move or run by leaps, as a horse; run with steady and more or less rapid springs. See the noun.
  • To ride a horse that is running; ride at a running pace.
  • To move very fast; scamper.
  • To cause to gallop: as, he galloped his horse all the way.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • intransitive verb To move or run in the mode called a gallop; as a horse; to go at a gallop; to run or move with speed.
  • intransitive verb To ride a horse at a gallop.
  • intransitive verb Fig.: To go rapidly or carelessly, as in making a hasty examination.
  • noun A mode of running by a quadruped, particularly by a horse, by lifting alternately the fore feet and the hind feet, in successive leaps or bounds.
  • noun a slow or gentle gallop.
  • transitive verb To cause to gallop.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • noun The fastest gait of a horse.
  • noun A two-beat stride during which all four legs are off the ground simultaneously
  • verb To ride at a galloping pace
  • verb To make electrical or other utility lines sway and/or move up and down violently, usually due to a combination of high winds and ice accrual on the lines.
  • verb To run very fast

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • verb ride at a galloping pace
  • verb cause to move at full gallop
  • noun a fast gait of a horse; a two-beat stride during which all four legs are off the ground simultaneously
  • verb go at galloping speed

Etymologies

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

[From Middle English galopen, to go at a gallop, from Old French galoper, of Germanic origin; see wel- in Indo-European roots.]

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

From Middle English galopen ("to gallop"), from Old French galoper (compare modern French galoper), from Frankish *wala hlaupan ("to run well") from *wala ("well") + *hlaupan ("to run"), from Proto-Germanic *hlaupanan (“to run, leap, spring”), from Proto-Indo-European *klaup-, *klaub- (“to spring, stumble”). Possibly also derived from a deverbal of Frankish walhlaup ("battle run") from *wal ("battlefield") from a Proto-Germanic word meaning "dead, victim, slain" from Proto-Indo-European *wel- (“death in battle, killed in battle”) + *hlaup ("course, track") from *hlaupan ("to run"). More at well, leap, valkyrie. See also the doublet wallop, coming from the same source through an Old Northern French variant.

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Examples

  • In order to avoid that risk again, the jockey would have Spread the Word gallop for a mile or two before a race so as to exhaust it.

    The Mob and Me John Partington 2010

  • An ambitious and fearless gallop from the jungles of Africa via a shocking encounter on a Nigerian beach to the media offices of London and domesticity in leafy suburbia ...

    Little Bee: Summary and book reviews of Little Bee by Chris Cleave. 2009

  • In charging, I had noticed how they had opened their ranks at the canter and then closed them at the gallop, which isn't easy; now they were doing the same thing as they retired towards the Heights, and I thought, these fellows ain't so slovenly as we thought.

    The Sky Writer Geoff Barbanell 2010

  • It can be either and a gallop is a "no-no" in a harness race.

    Oslo Grand Prix: Horserse Cosmo7 2009

  • The only other pace is a hard gallop, which is the best; you go like the wind over prairie and valley, up and down hill, all the same.

    The Romance of Isabel Lady Burton 2006

  • Charging at the gallop was the one thing the cavaliers did well from the start of the war, he remembered.

    War Game Price, Anthony 1976

  • Most people didn't like getting too close to prisoner escorts, no, but leaving at a gallop was a rather extreme reaction.

    The Alembic Plot A Terran Empire novel Ann Wilson

  • It cheered one up in the storm, and the lilt of it kept time to the leaping kind of gallop which is the easiest way to run on snowshoes: "Bye, baby bunting; bye, baby bunting -- Hello!"

    Wilderness Ways William Joseph Long 1909

  • Another thing: cavalry can trot away from anything, and a gallop is a gait unbecoming a soldier, unless he is going toward the enemy.

    The Romance of the Civil War 1903

  • [Page 265] hard gallop, which is the best; you go like the wind over prairie and valley, up and down hill, all the same.

    The Romance of Isabel, Lady Burton William Henry Burton Wilkins 1897

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    October 16, 2011