perambulation

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English

Etymology

From Middle English perambulacioun, from Anglo-Norman and Latin. By surface analysis, perambulate +‎ -ation or per- +‎ ambulation.

Noun

perambulation (countable and uncountable, plural perambulations)

  1. (rare) A survey, a tour; a walking around.
    • 1700, Tom Brown, Amusements Serious and Comical, calculated for the Meridian of London, page 10:
      If any Man for that reaſon has an Inclination to divert himſelf, and Sail with me round the Globe, to ſuperviſe almoſt all the Conditions of Humane Life, without being infected with the Vanities, and Vices that attend such a Whimſical Perambulation; let him follow me, who am going to Relate it in a Stile, and Language, proper to the Variety of the Subject: For as the Caprichio came Naturally into my Pericranium, I am reſolv’d to purſue it through Thick and Thin, to enlarge my Capacity for a Man of Buſineſs.
    • 1816 June – 1817 April/May (date written), [Mary Shelley], chapter 6, in Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus. , volume (please specify |volume=I to III), London: for Lackington, Hughes, Harding, Mavor, & Jones, published 1 January 1818, →OCLC:
      The month of May had already commenced […] when Henry proposed a pedestrian tour in the environs of Ingolstadt […] We passed a fortnight in these perambulations: my health and spirits had long been restored, and they gained additional strength from the salubrious air I breathed, the natural incidents of our progress, and the conversation of my friend.
    • 1820 March 5, Geoffrey Crayon [pseudonym; Washington Irving], “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow”, in The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent., number VI, New York, N.Y.: C S. Van Winkle, , →OCLC:
      All these, however, were mere terrors of the night, phantoms of the mind that walk in darkness; and though he had seen many spectres in his time, and been more than once beset by Satan in divers shapes, in his lonely perambulations, yet daylight put an end to all these evils; […]
  2. (law) An English legal ceremony in which an official from a town or parish walks around it to delineate and record its boundaries.
    Synonym: bannering
    • 1902, Transactions of the Lancashire and Cheshire Antiquarian Society, published by the Lancashire and Cheshire Antiquarian Society
      Another forest not named in the perambulation is that of Horwich.
    • 1929, Proceedings of the Dorset Natural History and Archaeological Society, published by the Dorset Natural History and Archaeological Society
      The earliest known reference to the stone is that in the perambulation of the parish of Puddletown recorded in the Cartulary of Christchurch Priory.
    • 1977, K.M. Elizabeth Murray, Caught in the Web of Words, Oxford: Oxford University Press, page 27:
      It was sung from the top of the oldest house in the burgh every June at the Common riding, which served both for a perambulation of the bounds of the common pastures or Haughs and to commemorate the young men of Harwick[.]
  3. The district thus inspected.

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