Today, Dan shared this post from Writer’s Write, the entirety of which was this image. It’s a list of 115 ways to say “walk.”
I’m all for synonyms and lists of synonyms. Especially for my crutch words (variations of look, for example), sign me the frick up for synonym lists. My characters can only do so much gazing, staring, squinting, and scanning. This list for walking synonyms is great. Grumpy characters can trudge, happy ones can skip, and nervous ones can scramble.
But sometimes, sometimes, fancy synonyms draw more attention to themselves, which we probably don’t want if the character is simply getting from point A to point B and are especially unhelpful if they put an image in the readers’ heads we don’t want there.
The one that caught my attention here is locomotes.
I imagined a character going down a track on his butt, which is funny but probably not what an author wants.
Side note: I also started singing The Loco-Motion in my head because I’m old it was a popular song and my parents liked it.
Slithers also jumped out at me. What a great word for a sneaky bad guy, right?
I wonder if anyone besides the Grinch can get away with this.
How about shambles, which I didn’t know was a walking word.
Ditto promenades, although judging from Giphy it’s closer than shambles was.
And I can’t recall how many characters have exercised across the street.
I think my favorite is legs. She legged across the street.
That cat doesn’t seem to be getting anywhere. Hmmm.
Which walking words are your favorites? Post a gif in the comments!
Allison Maruska 
I’ve read people using “legging it” as a description of walking fast, but the others you mention? Nope. There are some good alternatives on the list, though – certainly more than I get when I pull up my thesaurus. What I really need is a nice long list of alternatives to “smile,” especially versions that give a better indication of what *kind* of smile without tacking on an adverb. Because wow, my characters sure do seem to smile a lot…
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LOL. That was one of my crutches for a while too! *smiles* 😉
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The funny thing is that if I could actually use emoticons in my text, I’d be able to communicate what type of smiling the person was doing much better than I seem to be able to do with words! And this is coming from someone who still resists using emoticons in texts. Sigh…
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We’re slowly returning to hieroglyphs.
😱🤗😜
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I agree with Z. Raja. Your gifs for this post were fantastic.
And I’d never heard of paddles as a synonym for walking.
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Maybe for a penguin? 🤷🏻♀️
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Lol I JUST realized that you have a blog! Following now 😀 . And these gifs are cracking me up hard!
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Welcome! And yay! 😎
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When you look over that list, it’s fair to say there are not 115 synonyms for walk. But there are a lot.
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Certainly. Most of them are good, even! 😉
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Quite a few.
You know what? Baseball games use the word “leg“ all the time. He legged it out.
Can’t say I’m a fan, and it probably peaked in popularity circa 1902, but I hear it at least a few times every summer when I’m mowing the lawn and listening to a baseball game.
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I haven’t seen a baseball game since around 1992. I stand corrected.
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Pfft. That’s probably the definition of “legged“
To stand corrected, while in motion. Something like that.
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