Walkynge

Part of speech: verb, noun, adjective

Definitions

1. Travelling by moving the feet one after another at a steady pace ; the old craft of pounding woven cloth in water to felt and thicken it
2. The act of going somewhere on foot in Middle English usage ; the process of treading and beating wet woollen fabric to make it dense
3. Moving along the ground step by step on one's legs ; the medieval trade of fulling cloth by soaking and pressing it underfoot

Etymology: "Walkynge" is a Middle English spelling of the modern "walking," the present participle and gerund of "walk." The verb goes back to Old English "wealcan," meaning "to roll" or "to toss about," a sense still visible in the Old English word for a fulling-mill, which rolled and pounded cloth. Over time "walk" narrowed from rolling and turning to moving along on foot, and by the 1300s the ordinary sense of stepping along was well established. The "-ynge" ending is the Middle English form of the suffix that later became "-ing," used to turn a verb into a participle or a noun of action. In a text like this one, the spelling reflects the scribe's own pronunciation and habits rather than a separate word, so the meaning is simply the same as modern "walking."