Stride

Pronunciation

• enPR: strÄ«d, IPA: /straɪd/

From Old English stridan ("to stride"), from Proto-Germanic *strīdaną.

Etymonline

Cognate with Low German striden ("fight"), Dutch strijden ("fight"), German streiten ("fight, quarrel").

Full definition of stride

Verb

1. (intransitive) To walk with long steps.
• DrydenMars in the middle of the shining shield
  Is graved, and strides along the liquid field.
2. To stand with the legs wide apart; to straddle.
3. To pass over at a step; to step over.
• Shakespearea debtor that not dares to stride a limit
4. To straddle; to bestride.
• ShakespeareI mean to stride your steed.

Usage notes

The past participle of stride is extremely rare and mostly obsolete. Many people have trouble producing a form that feels natural.

Language Log

Language Hat

See the above verb.

Noun

1. A long step.
• 1907, w, The Dust of Conflict Chapter 7, Still, a dozen men with rifles, and cartridges to match, stayed behind when they filed through a white aldea lying silent amid the cane, and the Sin Verguenza swung into slightly quicker stride.
• 2011, November 10, Jeremy Wilson, England Under 21 5 Iceland Under 21 0: match report, An utterly emphatic 5-0 victory was ultimately capped by two wonder strikes in the last two minutes from Aston Villa midfielder Gary Gardner. Before that, England had utterly dominated to take another purposeful stride towards the 2013 European Championship in Israel. They have already established a five-point buffer at the top of Group Eight.
2. (computing) The number of memory locations between successive elements in an array, pixels in a bitmap, etc.
• 2007, Andy Oram, Greg Wilson, Beautiful codeThis stride value is generally equal to the pixel width of the bitmap times the number of bytes per pixel, but for performance reasons it might be rounded...

Derived terms

• bestride
• take something in one’s stride
• take something in stride
• get into one's stride
• strides Australian, plural only

Anagrams

• direst
• driest
• drites
• ridest