locomotion

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”).

• (UK) IPA^(key): /ləʊ.kəˈməʊ.ʃən/

  • Audio (Southern England):

    (file)

• (US, Canada) IPA^(key): /ˌloʊ.kəˈmoʊ.ʃən/
• (General Australian) IPA^(key): /ləʉ.kəˈməʉ.ʃən/
• Rhymes: -əʊʃən

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:

     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.

• locomotive
• locomotor

• IPA^(key): /lɔ.kɔ.mɔ.sjɔ̃/

• Audio:

  (file)

locomotion f (plural locomotions)

1. locomotion

• locomoteur
• locomotif

• “locomotion”, in Trésor de la langue française informatisé , 2012.