lope

present singular third person lopes · participle present loping · participle past loped · past loped

1. To travel an easy pace with long strides.

   He loped along, hour after hour, not fast but steady and covering much ground.

   3 more examples

   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.

   1927, William Byron Mowery, Pirates Of The Muskeg

   And as we waited in the car Victor got out and loped over to the house and said a few words to an old lady, […]

   1957 September 5, Jack Kerouac, chapter 5, in On the Road, New York, N.Y.: Viking Press, →OCLC, part 5

   “And the holidays?” Murgo proposed one evening as they loped down a bridlepath past lovers fondling in the grass. “Fun, are they? High living?”

   1986, John le Carré, A Perfect Spy

2. intransitiveobsoleteTo jump, leap.

   1621-22, Thomas Middleton et al, The Spanish Gypsy he that lopes on the ropes

   1 more example

   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

   1470–1485 (date produced), Thomas Malory, “Capitulum xxxv”, in [Le Morte Darthur], book IX, [London: […] by William Caxton], published 31 July 1485, →OCLC; republished as H[einrich] Oskar Sommer, editor, Le Morte Darthur […], London: David Nutt, […], 1889, →OCLC

plural lopes

1. An easy pace with long strides.

   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.

   2022 October 25, Nghi Vo, Into the Riverlands, Tordotcom, →ISBN

   1 more example

   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 […]

   1931, Home Geographic Monthly, volumes 1-2, page 45