Lope

//loʊp// noun, verb

noun, verb ·Moderate ·College level

Definitions

Noun
  1. 1
    An easy pace with long strides.

    "Hares have larger, leaner bodies, longer legs, and longer ears than the true rabbit. They also run with a lope instead of a hop. It is thought that they developed this more stream-lined body and swifter gait from running on the plains […]"

  2. 2
    a smooth three-beat gait; between a trot and a gallop wordnet
  3. 3
    a slow pace of running wordnet
Verb
  1. 1
    To travel an easy pace with long strides.

    "He loped along, hour after hour, not fast but steady and covering much ground."

  2. 2
    run easily wordnet
  3. 3
    To jump, leap. intransitive, obsolete

    "And as he cam by a ryver, in hys woodnes he wolde have made hys horse to have lopyn over the watir; and the horse fayled footyng and felle in the ryver"

Synonyms

All synonyms
canterambleboundburstburst of speedcanter

Antonyms

All antonyms
crawl

Example

More examples

"While the Duke of Alba in the Netherlands ruled with the axe of the executioner, Cervantes, in Spain, wrote his Don Quixote, and Lope de Vega, who himself held a post connected with the Inquisition, produced his admirable comedies."

Etymology

From Middle English lopen, from Old Norse hlaupa (“to leap, jump”). See leap. Cognate with German laufen (“walk, run”), Danish løbe (“run”), Dutch lopen (“walk, run”), Norwegian løpe (“run”). Doublet of leap.

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Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.