Other forms: gaits
A gait is the way a person walks. An unsteady gait, a rolling gait, gait analysis.
It is a clinical term as much as a descriptive one: gait analysis is used in medicine to diagnose and in running shops to sell shoes. A person's gait is individual enough to identify them, which is why it is used in surveillance. In horses, the gaits are the paces — walk, trot, canter, gallop — and some breeds have extra ones. Note that gait and gate were one word.
1noungaitThe way a person walks.
“I recognised my brother from far away by his slow, rolling gait.”
2nounhorsesOne of a horse's paces.
“The trainer watched the young horse move through each gait, from a slow walk to a gallop.”
gait is a manner of walking.
Gait is a specialised spelling of gate in its old sense of a way or manner of going, from Old Norse gata, a path. The two spellings split to keep the senses apart.
Proto-Germanic
*gatwǭ — passageway, street
Old Norse
gata — path, lane, alley, road
Middle English
gate — way, path, road, street
English, today
gait
Built from
From a specialised use of gate (“way, manner, behaviour, habit", properly "way, path, street, journey”), from Middle English gate (“way, path, road, street”), from Old Norse gata (“path, lane, alley, road”), from Proto-Germanic gatwǭ (“passageway, street”). a doublet of gate.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA