perambulator

Meanings

1. 1
   noun

   a baby carriage; a chiefly British and now dated term for a pram

   The nurse pushed the sleeping infant through the park in a perambulator.

2. 2
   noun

   an instrument with a wheel for measuring distance as it rolls over the ground

   The surveyor guided the perambulator along the boundary to measure its length.

From perambulate + the agent or instrument suffix -or, literally "one or something that walks around." Perambulate comes from Latin perambulare, from per- ("through") + ambulare ("to walk"). The word named both a distance-measuring wheel and, from the nineteenth century, a wheeled baby carriage.

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