Word of the Day!

peripatetic [per-uh-puh-tet-ik]

adjective:
1 of, relating to, or given to walking
2 moving or traveling from place to place; itinerant
noun:
1 a person who walks or travels about
2 (initial capital letter) a member of the Aristotelian school

Examples:

When he pulls up at Lark Hall, a ramshackle seaside house that has been turned into a retirement home, he knows it is the final stop in his peripatetic itinerary. (Stephen Holden, Caine breathes life into film on old age, The Herald Tribune, May 2009)

And Witold, who leads the peripatetic life of a travelling artist, must serve as a local trinket, a curio, for the global flow of commerce. (Jennifer Wilson, J M Coetzee's Interlingual Romance, The New Yorker, September 2023)

I've always been peripatetic, so I'm happy to live in lots of places. (Nicole Elphick, Michael Snelling's secret Sydney, The Guardian, October 2015)

This duty discharged, he subsided into the bosom of the family; and, entertaining himself with a strolling or peripatetic breakfast, watched, with genteel indifference, the process of loading the carriage. (Charles Dickens, The Old Curiosity Shop)

There were the Italian peripatetic vendors of weather-glasses, who had their headquarters at Norwich. (Herbert Jenkins, The Life of George Borrow)

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mid-15c, Peripatetik, 'a disciple of Aristotle, one of the set of philosophers who followed the teachings of Aristotle,' from Old French perypatetique (14c) and directly from Medieval Latin peripateticus 'pertaining to the disciples or philosophy of Aristotle,' from Greek peripatētikos 'given to walking about' (especially while teaching), from peripatein 'walk up and down, walk about,' from peri 'around, about' + patein 'to walk, tread'. Aristotle's custom was to teach while strolling through the Lyceum in Athens. In English, the philosophical meaning is older than that of 'person who wanders about' (1610s). As an adjective, 'walking about from place to place, itinerant,' from 1640s, often with a tinge of humor. (Online Etymology Dictionary)

Are you someone who likes to think on your feet? If so, you've got something in common with the followers of the ancient Greek philosopher Aristotle. Not only a thinker and teacher, Aristotle was also a walker, and his students were required to walk along beside him as he lectured while pacing to and fro. Thus it was that the Greek word peripatētikos (from peripatein, meaning 'to walk up and down') came to be associated with Aristotle and his followers. By the way, the covered walk in the Lyceum where Aristotle taught was known as the 'peripatos' (which can either refer to the act of walking or a place for walking). (Merriam-Webster)