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The Collaborative International Dictionary
Ambulatory

Ambulatory \Am"bu*la*to*ry\, a. [L. ambulatorius.]

  1. Of or pertaining to walking; having the faculty of walking; formed or fitted for walking; as, an ambulatory animal.

  2. Accustomed to move from place to place; not stationary; movable; as, an ambulatory court, which exercises its jurisdiction in different places.

    The priesthood . . . before was very ambulatory, and dispersed into all families.
    --Jer. Taylor.

  3. Pertaining to a walk. [R.]

    The princess of whom his majesty had an ambulatory view in his travels.
    --Sir H. Wotton.

  4. (Law) Not yet fixed legally, or settled past alteration; alterable; as, the dispositions of a will are ambulatory until the death of the testator.

Ambulatory

Ambulatory \Am"bu*la*to*ry\, n.; pl. Ambulatories. [Cf. LL. ambulatorium.] (Arch.) A place to walk in, whether in the open air, as the gallery of a cloister, or within a building.

Douglas Harper's Etymology Dictionary
ambulatory

"pertaining to walking;" also "shifting, not permanent," 1620s, from Latin ambulatorius "of or pertaining to a walker; movable," from ambulator, agent noun from past participle stem of ambulare "to walk" (see amble). Middle English had ambulary "movable" (mid-15c.).

ambulatory

from Medieval Latin ambulatorium, from Latin ambulatorius "movable," from ambulare (see amble).

Wiktionary
ambulatory

a. 1 Of, relating to, or adapted to walking 2 (context comparable medicine English) Able to walk about and not bedridden. 3 (context medicine English) Performed on or involving an ambulatory patient or an outpatient. 4 Accustomed to move from place to place; not stationary; movable. 5 (context legal English) Not yet legally fixed or settled; alterable. n. The round walkway encircling the altar in many cathedrals.

WordNet
ambulatory

adj. able to walk about; "the patient is ambulatory" [syn: ambulant]

Wikipedia
Ambulatory

The ambulatory (, "walking place") is the covered passage around a cloister or the processional way around the east end of a cathedral or large church and behind the high altar.

The term is also used to describe a garden feature in the grounds of a country house. A typical example is the one shown, which stands in the grounds of Horton Court in Gloucestershire, UK.

Usage examples of "ambulatory".

It was practically safe to assume that the choir ended in an apse, though whether the aisles were also apsidal, or continued round a great apse as an ambulatory, was a debatable point.

Through the ventilator grilles she could clearly hear the sounds of thumping and tapping and slithering of other-species ambulatory appendages overhead, and the indescribable babbie of growling, hissing, gobbling, and cheeping conversation that accompanied it.

At this rate, he was going to be ambulatory in a few hours, so I removed the restraints.

I spotted the Lok-Teel, looked at Shropana, then slipped the ambulatory mold in my pocket.

Filfaeril sat alone in the apse of a silent throne room, staring down a long ambulatory bounded by double-stacked arches and tall columns of fluted marble.

When it did not, she walked down the ambulatory to the bronze grillwork gates at the end.

Again, she found herself looking up the ambulatory toward the two wooden thrones on the dais.

On her way back to the dais, she took the time to step through each of the arches along the ambulatory, but the result was always the same.

The ghostly outlines of cask racks appeared along the ambulatory, and she began to see that her only hope of salvation lay in clinging to her true identity.

Footsteps echoed from both ends of the ambulatory and she saw them now.

The myn at the far side of the ambulatory rushed them, but Kanz had already reached the top and Maranya was close behind him.

Chasing such harmless bits of decorative ambulatory life gave her something to do.

Though perplexing to his palate, it was anything but unpleasant, despite the immediate and unsettling proximity of its ambulatory alien origins.

She stood quietly in the semi-darkness, illuminated by the glow of dozens of precisely imaged, hovering galaxies, watching and listening as the two most intelligent beings she had ever met in her life conversed in a steady hum of words, whistles, and clicks with an oversized insectoid who gleamed like an ambulatory topaz and smelled of orchids and vanilla.

His sole interest lay in getting one Captain Alicia DeVries not merely ambulatory but fully reconditioned, and his was clearly an obsessive personality.