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locomotion

From Wiktionary, the free dictionary

English

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Etymology

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From French locomotion, from Latin locō (literally “from a place”) (ablative of locus (“place”)) + motionem (“motion, a moving”) (nominative mōtio), from Latin movēre (“move; change, exchange, go in or out, quit”), from Proto-Indo-European *m(y)ewh₁- (“to move, drive”).

Pronunciation

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Noun

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locomotion (usually uncountable, plural locomotions)

  1. (uncountable) The ability to move from place to place, or the act of doing so.
  2. (biology, uncountable) Self-powered motion by which a whole organism changes its location through walking, running, jumping, crawling, swimming, brachiating or flying.
    • 2011 September 22, Richard Shelton, “Sheep, pig, whale”, in Times Literary Supplement:
      So it is that one of the characteristics that the sperm whale shares with all cetaceans is that it swims by flexing its tail flukes dorso-ventrally, a less efficient way of swimming than that of its distant piscine ancestors, but a mode of locomotion that derives directly from the galloping of its more recent terrestrial ones.
  3. (countable, often preceded by definite article) A dance, originally popular in the 1960s, in which the arms are used to mimic the motion of the connecting rods of a steam locomotive.
    • 2005 February 7, Ben Ratliff, “New CD's”, in The New York Times‎[1]:
      Mr. Motian's own tunes, folk-simple locomotions of straight melody, fast or slow, with acres of room for interpretation, have accounted for some of the mistier sets.

Derived terms

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English terms derived from the Proto-Indo-European root *mew- (0 c, 2 e)

Translations

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French

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Pronunciation

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Noun

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locomotion f (plural locomotions)

  1. locomotion

Derived terms

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Further reading

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