Etymology
1. O.E.
wealcan "to toss, roll," and
wealcian "to roll up, curl, muffle up," from P.Gmc.
*welk- (cf. O.N.
valka "to drag about," Dan.
valke "to full," M.Du.
walken "to knead, press, full," O.H.G.
walchan "to knead," Ger.
walken "to full"), perhaps ult. from PIE base
*wel- "to turn, bend, twist, roll" (see vulva). Meaning shifted in early M.E., perhaps from colloquial use of the O.E. word. "Rarely is there so specific a word as NE
walk, clearly distinguished from both
go and
run" [Buck]. Meaning "to go away" is recorded from c.1460. Trans. meaning "to exercise a dog (or horse)" is from 1470.
Walk-up in ref. to an apartment not accessible by elevator is attested from 1919 as an adj., 1925 as a noun. The surname
Walker probably preserves the cloth-fulling sense.
2. From Middle English walk, walke, walken, walkyn, wolken (“to roll, toss, or turn; to walk; to move; to be living; to beat or full; to perform”), a conflation of Old English wealcan (“to move around; to revolve; to roll; to fluctuate; to discuss”) (ġewealcan (“to go, traverse; to roll”)) and Old English wealcian (“to curl, roll up, twist; to wrinkle”); both from Proto-West Germanic *walkan, from Proto-Germanic *walkaną (“to roll, toss, turn, wind; to walk, wander, wend; to full, trample”), *walkōną (“to roll about; to full”), from Proto-Indo-European *walg- (“to twist, turn, move”).
3. Cognates
4. Cognate with Bavarian woikn (“to full, tan; to knead dough; to roll out dough”), Cimbrian balchan (“to beat, hit, strike”), Dutch zwalken (“to walk around”), German walken (“to full, tan, walk; to knead; to beat up”), Danish valke (“to full, walk, waulk”), Faroese válka (“make dirty; stir up dirt”), Swedish valka (“to full cloth, to waulk”); also Latin valgus (“bent out; bandy, bow-legged”). More at vagrant and whelk. Doublet of waulk. See: Old English '
wealcan', Old English '
wealcian', Proto-Germanic '
*walkaną', Cimbrian 'balchan', Dutch '
zwalken', German, old spelling '
walken', Danish '
valke', Faroese '
válka', Swedish '
valka'.
Verbs referencing "walk"
Naija
waka, Sranan
waka, Swedish
valka, Cimbrian balchan.