Other forms: rambling, rambles, rambled
To ramble is to walk a long way for pleasure, through fields and lanes, with no particular route in mind. Boots by the door, a flask of tea, a Sunday afternoon spent getting mildly lost.
The second meaning is about talking. When you ramble, you go on and on and never arrive at the point — he rambled about his neighbours for twenty minutes. That one takes ON: ramble on, rambling on. A ramble is also a noun, the walk itself, and a rambler is the person who takes it (a rambling rose is a different thing, a rose that sprawls). Rambling as an adjective covers both senses: a rambling letter has no shape, and a rambling old farmhouse spreads out in every direction.
1verbrambleTo walk a long way for pleasure through the countryside, without hurrying and without a fixed route.
“We rambled across the fields all afternoon and came home muddy.”
2verbspeechTo talk or write at length, wandering away from the point.
“He rambled on about the war until everyone stopped listening.”
3nountakenA long walk taken for pleasure in the country.
“They went for a ramble along the coast path.”
Ramble grew out of roam. Middle English had ramlen, a form of ramen, to roam, and the repeated-action ending gave the sense of wandering about with no plan. The sense of talking without getting anywhere arrived in the 1630s. One suggestion is that the vowel was pulled by Middle Dutch rammelen, a word used of the night wanderings of amorous cats.
Middle English
*ramlen
English, today
ramble
An altered form (with dissimilation of mm to mb) of dialectal rammle, from Middle English ramlen, ramelen, frequentative of Middle English ramen (“to roam, ramble”); compare Swedish ramla (“to stumble; fall; make a noise; rumble”), Danish ramle (“to stumble; collapse; thunder; boom”); equivalent to roam + -le. "mid-15 c., perhaps frequentative of 'romen' 'to walk, go' perhaps via 'romblen' (late 14 c.) 'to ramble.' The vowel change perhaps by influence of Middle Dutch 'rammelen,' a derivative of 'rammen' 'copulate,' 'used of the night wanderings of the amorous cat.' Meaning 'to talk or write incoherently' is from 1630s".
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA
Practised in Ways of Moving