lope
noun
No English definition recorded for this entry.
L17835 on Wikidata ↗verb
- to move or ride at a lope
Wiktionary
Pronunciation: /ləʊp/ / /loʊp/
noun
Etymology: From Middle English lopen, from Old Norse hlaupa (“to leap, jump”). See leap. Cognate with German laufen (“walk, run”), Danish løbe (“run”), Dutch lopen (“walk, run”), Norwegian løpe (“run”). Doublet of leap.
- An easy pace with long strides.
“Hares have larger, leaner bodies, longer legs, and longer ears than the true rabbit. They also run with a lope instead of a hop. It is thought that they developed this more stream-lined body and swifter gait from running on the plains […]”
“Then he was gone, not with the flashing quick steps that Lao Bingyi and Wei Jintai had employed but with the long lope of a wolf that knows to pace himself for a hunt.”
verb
Etymology: From Middle English lopen, from Old Norse hlaupa (“to leap, jump”). See leap. Cognate with German laufen (“walk, run”), Danish løbe (“run”), Dutch lopen (“walk, run”), Norwegian løpe (“run”). Doublet of leap.
- To travel an easy pace with long strides.
“He loped along, hour after hour, not fast but steady and covering much ground.”
“Scott hurried down the dark path, lifted the canoe from the muddy rock to the moss, took out the packs, and loped back. toward the cabin. As he passed the window he glanced inside.”
- To jump, leap.
“And as he cam by a ryver, in hys woodnes he wolde have made hys horse to have lopyn over the watir; and the horse fayled footyng and felle in the ryver”
“1621-22, Thomas Middleton et al, The Spanish Gypsy he that lopes on the ropes”