Other forms: galloping, galloped, gallops
To gallop is to run at a horse's fastest pace. Gallop across the field, at full gallop, a galloping horse.
It is the fastest of the four gaits — walk, trot, canter, gallop — and in it all four feet leave the ground at once, which photography settled in the 1870s after centuries of painters getting it wrong. Figuratively, galloping means increasing fast: galloping inflation. Note at a gallop; and that the word comes from a Frankish phrase meaning to run well.
1verbgallopTo run at a horse's fastest pace.
“The horses galloped across the open field, their hooves thundering.”
2adjectiveincreasingIncreasing fast, in the form galloping.
“Galloping inflation meant that prices in the shops rose every week.”
Too few real examples of this word to estimate which sense is commonest.
gallop is a fast pace.
Old French galoper comes from Frankish wala hlaupan, to run well — wala, well, plus hlaupan, to run. Leap and the German laufen come from the same running.
Proto-Indo-European
*klaup-
Proto-Germanic
*hlaupaną — to run, leap, spring
Frankish
*wala hlaupan — to run well
Old French
galoper
Middle English
galopen — to gallop
English, today
gallop
Built from
From Middle English galopen (“to gallop”), from Old French galoper (compare modern French galoper), from Frankish wala hlaupan (“to run well”), from wala (“well”) + hlaupan (“to run”), from Proto-Germanic hlaupaną (“to run, leap, spring”), from Proto-Indo-European klaup-, klaub- (“to spring, stumble”). Possibly also derived from a deverbal of Frankish walhlaup (“battle run”) from wal (“battlefield”) from a Proto-Germanic word meaning "dead, victim, slain" from Proto-Indo-European wel- (“death in battle, killed in battle”) + hlaup (“course, track”) from hlaupan (“to run”). More at well, leap, valkyrie. See also the doublet a doublet of wallop, coming from the same source through an Old Northern French variant.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA