Ramble
verb
Pronunciation: "ræmb(ə)l
Etymology: Of uncertain origin.
Indicative past, past participle and present participle: rambled, rambled, rambling.
Intrantisitive use:
1. (Sometimes) To travel, to ride or to sail capriciously, without a plan and with no determined route. (More often, Of persons and some other footed animals) to walk capriciously, carelessly, informally, unceremoniously, leisurely, or without plan and with no determined route; to stroll here and there; to roam; rove; wander. (Often it is simply used for to walk)
Synonyms: Roam, rove, stroll, troll, range, wander, spatiate.
Equivalents: Spanish pasear, divagar; French: déambuler, se promener, ambuler, errer, flâner, se balader; Italian: vagare, errare.
The morning after my arrival—a September morning, but warm and bright as any in July—I rambled into a wood of oaks with a few walnut trees intermixed, forming the closest shade above my head.
Nathaniel Hawthorne (Twice-Told Tales)
For three years they rambled around, holidaying in South Africa, looking for a permanent home.
Rudyard Kipling (The Jungle Book - Página x)
He was often rambling about on horseback.
Leslie Stephen (Pope, 1880)
On the following evening they repeated their walk; and […] rambled to a considerable distance from the abbey.
Ann Radcliffe (A Sicilian Romance, 1790)
She rambled for hours, seeking rather than shunning the most dangerous paths.
Walter Scott (Chronicles of the Canongate)
Florence, having rambled through the handsome house, from room to room, seeks her own chamber.
Charles Dickens (Dombey and Son)
The islander may ramble all day at will.
Ralph Waldo Emerson (Essays)
The gentleman told him, "he would hardly be able to overtake them; and that, if he did not know his way, he would be in danger of losing himself on the downs, for it would be presently dark; and he might ramble about all night, and perhaps find himself farther from his journey's end in the morning than he was now."
Henry Fielding (Joseph Andrews)
By the light of the flickering lamps he rambled home to supper, and had not long been sitting at table when his landlady brought up a letter that had just arrived for him.
Thomas Hardy (Jude the Obscure, 1895)
They rambled out of the town, and along a path over the low-lying lands that bordered it, though these were frosty now, and the extensive seed-fields were bare of colour and produce.
Thomas Hardy (Jude the Obscure, 1895)
Yesterday evening we left the beautiful island of Mackinaw, […]. We had climbed its cliffs, rambled on its shores, threaded the walks among its thickets […]
William Cullen Bryant (Letters of a Traveller)
It was a bright moonlight evening, and we rambled two or three hours about the town and the island.
William Cullen Bryant (Letters of a Traveller)
Twenty of the savages now got on board, and proceeded to ramble over every part of the deck, and scramble about among the rigging, making themselves much at home, and examining every article with great inquisitiveness.
Edgar Poe
I did not care to go out of sight of the boat, fearing the coming of canoes with savages down the river; but the boy seeing a low place about a mile up the country, rambled to it, and by-and-by I saw him come running towards me.
Daniel Defoe (Robinson Crusoe)
It was just at high-water when these people came on shore; and while they rambled about to see what kind of a place they were in, they had carelessly stayed till the tide was spent, and the water was ebbed considerably away, leaving their boat aground.
Daniel Defoe (Robinson Crusoe)
It happened (a thing not very unusual), that the guide who undertook to conduct him on his way, was unluckily unacquainted with the road; so that having missed his right track, and being ashamed to ask information, he rambled about backwards and forwards till night came on, and it began to grow dark.
Henry Fielding (Tom Jones, 1749)
[…] no one but a madman would have thought of leaving so good a house to ramble about the country at that time of night.
Henry Fielding (Tom Jones, 1749)
The lowing heifer and the bleating ewe, in herds and flocks, may ramble safe and unregarded through the pastures.
Henry Fielding (Tom Jones, 1749)
Emily threw her veil over her, and went down to walk upon the ramparts, the only walk, indeed, which was open to her, though she often wished, that she might be permitted to ramble among the woods below, and still more, that she might sometimes explore the sublime scenes of the surrounding country.
Ann Radcliffe (The Mysteries of Udolpho, 1794)
When they returned to the chateau, Lady Blanche conducted Emily to her favourite turret, and from thence they rambled through the ancient chambers, which Blanche had visited before.
Ann Radcliffe (The Mysteries of Udolpho, 1794)
[…] in the course of the evening I had rambled down to the door, and a little way along the street, that I might have another peep at the old houses.
Charles Dickens (David Copperfield)
2. (Metaphorical acception) To become impertinently garrulous on writing and speaking; to write or talk impertinently, discursively, ramblingly, digressively, etc.
Synonyms: Maunder, waffle, excurse.
Equivalents: Italian: divagare; French: divaguer and Spanish: divagar.
[…] she had rambled into very strange conceits from some parts of his discourse.
Henry Fielding (Amelia, 1751)
[…] I have rambled enough. / Adieu, for the present.
Samuel Richardson (Clarissa)
[…] I remember I rambled strangely in that letter.
Samuel Richardson (Clarissa)
Sometimes his mood was more earnest, and as he lay he often rambled on upon the defeat of his early aims.
Thomas Hardy (Jude the Obscure)
Again I ramble away from thinking it out to the end. It is not so far to the end that I need be tempted to break off. Now, on straight!
Charles Dickens (Our Mutual Friend)
***Transitive use:
To wander over; to ramble over.
More often I rambled the streets, either on a friend’s dragster (we’d come to an arrangement) or on foot.
Stewart Henderson (A Frontier Novel)
Derivatives from Ramble: Ramble (noun), ramblage, rambler, ramble-scramble, rambling, ramblingly, ramblingness. ESTEFALU - COPYRIGHTED
