Word of the Day: Peripatetic

peripatetic

per-i-pa-tet-ic / pĕr-ə-pə-tĕt-ĭk

adjective

1. itinerant; walking about or traveling from place to place

La Fontaine sauntered about from one to the other, a peripatetic, absent-minded, boring, unbearable dreamer, who kept buzzing and humming at everybody’s elbow a thousand poetic abstractions.

From “The Man in the Iron Mask” by Alexandre Dumas, 1802 – 1870

2. (Peripatetic) pertaining to the Greek philosopher Aristotle, who taught philosophy while walking around the grove at the Lyceum, the school he in founded in Athens, or his teachings

The dumpling-eaters are a race sprung partly from the old Epicurean and partly from the Peripatetic Sect; they were first brought into Britain by Julius Caesar; and finding it a Land of Plenty, they wisely resolved never to go home again.

John Arbuthnot, 1667 – 1735

noun

1. a person who walks from place to place; an itinerant

Vice is a peripatetic, always in progression.

Owen Feltham, 1602 – 1668

2. (Peripatetic) a student or member of the school of Aristotle or one who follows Aristotle’s philosophy

Repudiating the sensible world, which he neither sees himself nor believes from those who have, the Peripatetic joins combat by childish quibbling in a world on paper, and denies the Sun shines because he himself is blind.

Johannes Kepler, 1571 – 1630