locomotion

Meanings

1. 1
   noun

   Self-powered motion by which a whole organism changes its location through walking, running, jumping, crawling, swimming, brachiating or flying.

   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.

2. 2
   noun

   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.

   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.

3. 3
   noun

   self-propelled movement

4. 4
   noun

   the power or ability to move

5. 5
   noun

   The ability to move from place to place, or the act of doing so.

Etymology

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”).