locomotion

From French locomotion, from Latin locō (literally “from a place”) (ablative of locus (“place”)) + mōtiōnem (“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”).

locomotion (usually uncountable, plural locomotions)

(uncountable) The ability to move from place to place, or the act of doing so.
(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.
- 2017 June 9, Susan Scutti, “Study links mosquito spray to delayed motor skills in babies”, in CNN‎, archived from the original on 6 October 2022:
  The assessment also looks at reflexes, stationary (body control), locomotion (movement), grasping and visual-motor integration (eyes and hands coordinated).
(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.

ability to move

English