We were talking about the grocery list this morning, on a rare cold winter day in Houston. I told my partner that since we needed several basic necessities, probably from different stores, I’d order online. “I figure that’s better than us traipsing from one store to another on this miserable day.”
Well, I follow Sesquiotica’s blog. He writes about words.
Words are delicious and intoxicating. They do much more than just denote; they have appearance, sound, a feel in the mouth, and words they sound like and travel with.
As it happens, he wrote about traipsing this week:
In her song “Language Is a Virus,” Laurie Anderson says “paradise is exactly like where you are right now, only much much better.” Well, traipsing is exactly like walking, only much much worse. “I went down to the store”: neutral. “I walked over to the store”: neutral. “I traipsed over to the store”: you hated every step.
I had no idea! I guess I did have a negative connotation in mind when I used traipse this morning. Since we had to go to several stores, and it is cold and wet outside, it seemed more energy efficient to have someone who was delivering, deliver to one more stop.
So am I asking the delivery driver to traipse to one more place than they would ordinarily have to? But if driving from one location to another is your job, does adding another destination count as traipsing?
Mr. Sesquiotica (James Harbeck) got some pushback on his take on traipsing, and today he came back with a little more explanation:
It turns out my sense of traipse is a little out of step with some other people’s. A few readers expressed surprise at or disagreement with my assertion that it always has a negative tone, whether it means ‘walk in an untidy way’ or ‘walk trailing through mud’ or ‘walk aimlessly or needlessly’ or ‘tramp or trudge about’ (all of these are definitions the Oxford English Dictionary has). One friend did some searching and, along with assorted usages that allowed but did not demand a negative tone, found a few that did not fit that sense at all: traipsing comfortably, traipsing warmly, traipsing blithely.
Merriam-Webster has a slightly different take; in their synonyms for traipse, they characterize traipse as to meander, or wander.
WANDER, ROAM, RAMBLE, ROVE, TRAIPSE, MEANDER mean to go about from place to place usually without a plan or definite purpose.
But while that is closer to my intended meaning, Merriam Webster’s primary definition of traipse is to walk.
traipsed; traipsing
: to go on foot : WALK
also : to walk or travel about without apparent plan but with or without a purpose
When I said we’d be traipsing to several stores, I certainly didn’t think we’d be trailing through mud;I fully intended to drive. Houstonians generally don’t walk anywhere, and on this most miserable day of this year, I wasn’t going to attempt anything crazy like walking to the grocery store—whether or not I would be trailing through the mud.
And of course I had a plan! Who goes to the grocery store without a plan? But I was anticipating that we’d wander from place to place, looking for the best prices, the best produce, and Sam’s Club doesn’t even sell ammonia, so I’d have to traipse to another store to get ammonia. But I won’t be going through the mud and I won’t be walking, and I do have a plan and a purpose.
Maybe I need to find a better word than traipse?