ambul-, ambulat-, -ambulate, -ambulating, -ambulation -ambulator, -ambulatory, -ambulant, -ambulic, -ambulism, -ambulist

A slow, easy walk or a gentle pace; a stroll.

1. To go at a slow, easy walking pace; to stroll; to saunter: "He ambled around the park."
2. With reference to a horse, to go at a slow pace with the legs moving in lateral pairs and usually having a four-beat rhythm.

1. One of the five radial areas on the undersurface of the starfish and similar echinoderms, from which the tube feet are protruded and withdrawn: "These ambulacra usually have rows of locomotive suckers or tentacles, which protrude from regular pores of starfish so they can move (walk) around."
2. The suckers on the feet of mites: "Mites use ambulacra as a means of walking on and hanging on to their victims."

1. A specially equipped motor vehicle, airplane, ship, etc., for carrying sick or injured people, usually to a hospital.
2. A vehicle designed and equipped for carrying people to and from a hospital.
2. Formerly a field hospital; that is, on a field of battle where the wounded were carried out on stretchers, etc. by "walking bearers".

"Ambulance" was borrowed from French hopital ambulant, mobile hospital, or literally, "walking hospital," from Latin ambulantem and ambulare, "to walk."

Historically, soldiers wounded in battle usually stayed where they fell until it was dark or until the end of some particular combat when they could be carried or dragged off for treatment.

This situation didn't change until 1240, when Italy's Misericordia di Firenze, the first known emergency-care service, was founded. Although primitive horse-drawn conveyances for the wounded made occasional appearances—at the Battle of Málaga in 1487, for example—it wasn't until 1792 that ambulances became a regular part of the battlefield scene.

It was at this time that Baron Dominique-Jean Larrey, a French army surgeon, introduced what he called the ambulances volantes, or "flying field hospitals". Such conveyances were covered, portable litters filled with bandages to stop the flow of blood and to bind the wounds of soldiers on the battlefield. The transporter was also called the hopital ambulant; that is, "walking hospital" or "traveling hospital."

One of the first "modern" ambulance systems appeared during the American Civil War, when Dr. Jonathan Letterman, medical director of the Army of the Potomac, assigned two horse-drawn ambulances to every regiment of 500 infantrymen. The Geneva Convention, in 1864, recognized military ambulances, declaring that the vehicles, the wounded they carried, and the medics that operated them, should be considered and treated as neutrals.

1. A reference to moving or walking around; moving around from place to place.
2. Walking or in a walking position: "She was an ambulant patient and so she didn't need a wheel-chair."

1. To walk around or to move (walk) from place to place.
2. To walk or to move from one place to another.

A reference to walking and moving from place to place: "They were striving to improve their ambulating distances every day."

To move from place to place by walking: "The elderly man's daily ambulations helped to keep him in good physical condition."

A descriptive term for walking or for moving forward.

1. Someone who walks aroud; a walker.
2. An instrument for measuring distances: "The surveyor was using an ambulator consisting of a wheel to roll along over the ground with a dial plate to measure the distance traveled from one point to another one."

1. Pertaining to, or capable of walking: "It was an ambulatory exploration of the city."
2. Adapted for walking, as the limbs of many animals.
3. Moving around or from place to place; not stationary.
4. Not confined to bed; able or strong enough to walk: "He was an ambulatory patient who could go home instead of having to stay in a hospital bed."

"An ambulatory health service is for people who are not required to be hospitalized because they are not physically handicapped and so they are able to walk in a normal way."

5. Serving patients who are able to walk: "The health clinic offered an ambulatory care center."
6. In law, not fixed; alterable or revocable: "He left an ambulatory will."

1. An aisle surrounding the end of the choir or chancel of a church.
2. The covered walk of a cloister: "The visitors were walking around in the ambulatory of the historical cloister."

The administration of anesthesia when the patient is admitted and discharged on the same day of a surgical procedure.

Aimless wandering or moving around: "The ambulatory automatism of a person includes the performance of mechanical acts without any conscious awareness of doing such movements."

"During ambulatory automatisms, epileptic patients walk around and are able to carry out some functions without being clearly conscious of either themselves or their surroundings."