lope

verb

1. To travel an easy pace with long strides.

   “He loped along, hour after hour, not fast but steady and covering much ground.”

   “Scott hurried down the dark path, lifted the canoe from the muddy rock to the moss, took out the packs, and loped back. toward the cabin. As he passed the window he glanced inside.”

   “And as we waited in the car Victor got out and loped over to the house and said a few words to an old lady, […]”

   ““And the holidays?” Murgo proposed one evening as they loped down a bridlepath past lovers fondling in the grass. “Fun, are they? High living?””

2. (intransitive, obsolete)To jump, leap.

   “And as he cam by a ryver, in hys woodnes he wolde have made hys horse to have lopyn over the watir; and the horse fayled footyng and felle in the ryver”

   “1621-22, Thomas Middleton et al, The Spanish Gypsy he that lopes on the ropes”

noun

1. An easy pace with long strides.

   “Hares have larger, leaner bodies, longer legs, and longer ears than the true rabbit. They also run with a lope instead of a hop. It is thought that they developed this more stream-lined body and swifter gait from running on the plains […]”

   “Then he was gone, not with the flashing quick steps that Lao Bingyi and Wei Jintai had employed but with the long lope of a wolf that knows to pace himself for a hunt.”