''peripatetic'' ▫ᴱᴺ｜Definition｜1st｜20260904120411-00-⌔

peripatetic - Wiktionary, the free dictionary

English

Adjective

peripatetic (comparative more peripatetic, superlative most peripatetic)

• Tending to walk about.
• Constantly travelling.
  • ✤ Near-synonyms: itinerant, nomadic
  • ✤ After peripatetic upbringing that took her from America to Portugal, Switzerland, Belgium and England, [Mary-Kay] Wilmers read French and Russian at Oxford.¹
• (philosophy, usually capitalized) Alternative letter-case form of Peripatetic.
  • ✤ The true peripatetic school.²
  • ✤ Demetreius of Phalerum, a peripatetic philosopher of the fourth century B.C., wrote an amatory treatise entitled Eroticus - no longer, however, extant.³

Noun

peripatetic (plural peripatetics)

• One who walks about; a pedestrian; an itinerant.
  • ✤ Synonyms: wayfarer, itinerant, pedestrian, nomad
• (philosophy, usually capitalized) Alternative letter-case form of Peripatetic (“Aristotelian”).
  • ✤ He who would think clearly must think like a peripatetic even if he is unwilling to walk like one.⁴

Etymology

From French péripatétique, from Latin peripatēticus, from Ancient Greek περιπατητικός (peripatētikós, “given to walking around”), from περιπατέω (peripatéō, “to walk around”), from περί (perí, “around”) (English peri-)+ πατέω (patéō, “to walk”).

Pronunciation

• (Received Pronunciation, US) IPA: /ˌpɛɹ.ɪ.pəˈtɛt.ɪk/, /ˌpɛɹ.ə.pəˈtɛt.ɪk/
• Audio (US): 🔊
• Rhymes: -ɛtɪk

Printed 2026-09-04.

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Footnotes

1. 2014 March 9, Elizabeth Day, “Is the LRB the best magazine in the world?”, in The Observer ‎${}^{[1]}$: ↩

2. 1642, James Howell, Instructions For Foreign Travel: ↩

3. 1961, Harry E. Wedeck, Dictionary of Aphrodisiacs, New York: The Citadel Press, page 75: ↩

4. 1961, Albert Upton, Design for Thinking: A First Book in Semantics, section 11: ↩