Other forms: strolling, strolls, strolled
To stroll is to walk slowly because you are enjoying it, with nowhere you have to be. Strolling along the seafront after dinner, strolling round the market on a Saturday, strolling home the long way.
Slowness is built in, so stroll quickly makes no sense, and it is always on foot. The noun is common: go for a stroll, an evening stroll, a gentle stroll round the block. The word also carries an attitude — someone who strolls in twenty minutes late is not sorry about it — and sports commentators use it for easy wins, where a team strolls to victory. In American English a stroller is the pushchair you put a small child in, which is a different thing from a person who strolls.
1verbstrollTo walk slowly and without hurry, for pleasure.
“They strolled through the park after lunch.”
2verbarriveTo arrive or move somewhere in a casual, unhurried way.
“He strolled in twenty minutes after the start.”
3nountakenA slow, unhurried walk taken for pleasure.
“We went for a stroll along the river before bed.”
Too few real examples of this word to estimate which sense is commonest.
Also accepted in games: wander
English borrowed stroll from German strollen, a variant of Swiss German strolchen, which comes from Strolch — a vagabond, a rascal. The word arrived attached to people with nowhere in particular to be. The disrepute wore off; the aimlessness stayed.
gsw
strolchen
German
strollen
English, today
stroll
Built from
Borrowed from German strollen, a variant of gsw strolchen, from Strolch (“vagabond; rascal”).
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA