4 August 2017
ramble
[ram-buh l]
verb (used without object), rambled, rambling.
1. to wander around in a leisurely, aimless manner:
They rambled through the shops until closing time.
2. to take a course with many turns or windings, as a stream or path.
3. to grow in a random, unsystematic fashion:
The vine rambled over the walls and tree trunks.
4. to talk or write in a discursive, aimless way (usually followed by on):
The speaker rambled on with anecdote after anecdote.
verb (used with object), rambled, rambling.
5. to walk aimlessly or idly over or through:
They spent the spring afternoon rambling woodland paths.
noun
6. a walk without a definite route, taken merely for pleasure.
Origin of ramble
1610-1620 First recorded in 1610-20; origin uncertain
Synonyms
1. stroll, saunter, amble, stray, straggle. See roam.
Dictionary.com Unabridged
Examples from the Web for ramble
Contemporary Examples
The result is a long narrative that can ramble, as conversations do, but is an essential contribution all the same.
The Unguarded Bill Clinton
Ted Widmer
October 4, 2009
Now, the judges, while passionate as always, seem to have more time than ever to ramble.
The Reality Makeover That Failed
Andy Dehnart
August 9, 2010
So he started alone for a ramble among the Channel Islands, and I went back to Paris.
Read ‘The King in Yellow,’ the ‘True Detective’ Reference That’s the Key to the Show
Robert W. Chambers
February 19, 2014
Historical Examples
A Devonshire botanist told me he had identified nearly three hundred different mosses in a two days’ ramble in that county.
Gairloch In North-West Ross-Shire
John H. Dixon, F.S.A. Scot
They ramble up and down, and Eugene allows himself to sup of delight.
Floyd Grandon’s Honor
Amanda Minnie Douglas
I had now time to ramble round, and examine various things of interest.
Q.6.a and Other places
Francis Buckley
From its top it was five miles to ramble Valley by the main road.
Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1904
Lucy Maud Montgomery
And so anybody can write a decent dialogue if you allow326 him to ramble as we all do in actual talk.
Hours in a Library
Leslie Stephen
There is a point on that road where we could get down and have an hour’s ramble on the hillside.
A Room With A View
E. M. Forster
Something in the stolid way he did so caused Flambeau’s fierce black eyes to ramble over his companion afresh.
The Wisdom of Father Brown
G. K. Chesterton
Anagram
elm bar
Mr Able
Today’s quote
Poetry is a mirror which makes beautiful that which is distorted.
– Percy Bysshe Shelley
On this day
4 August 1181 – Supernova (not the rock band), SN1181, observed by Chinese and Japanese astronomers in the constellation Cassiopeia. It was visible for 185 days. A supernova is the explosive death of a star, resulting in a nebula of illuminated gas.
4 August 1792 – birth of Percy Bysshe Shelley, English romantic poet, considered to be one the finest lyric poets of all time. Died 8 July 1822.
4 August 1914 – World War I officially starts as Great Britain declares war on Germany in response to the German invasion of Belgium the day before.
4 August 1914 – United States declares its neutrality in World War I.
4 August 1929 – birth of Yasser Arafat, Palestinian leader. Died 11 November 2004.
4 August 1944 – German police and Gestapo officers arrest Jewish diarist, Anne Frank and her family, in Amsterdam. The family was eventually transported to the Auschwitz concentration camp. In March 1945 a typhus epidemic spread through the camp, claiming the Anne’s life. The camp was liberated only weeks later, in April 1945, by British troops. Anne Frank kept a diary which later was published and became a best seller.
4 August 1964 – the second Gulf of Tonkin Incident in which it was believed North Vietnamese troops fired on two US destroyers, the USS Maddox and the USS Turner Joy. It is now believed the second incident may have involved false radar images and not the North Vietnamese.