From Thoreau on Walking (Bartleby Harvard Classics)

I have met with but one or two persons in the course of my life who understood the art of Walking, that is, of taking walks,—who had a genius, so to speak, for sauntering: which word is beautifully derived from “idle people who roved about the country, in the Middle Ages, and asked charity, under pretence of going à la Sainte Terre,” to the Holy Land, till the children exclaimed, “There goes a Sainte-Terrer,” a Saunterer, a Holy-Lander. They who never go to the Holy Land in their walks, as they pretend, are indeed mere idlers and vagabonds; but they who do go there are saunterers in the good sense, such as I mean. Some, however, would derive the word form sans terre, without land or a home, which, therefore, in the good sense, will mean, having no particular home, but equally at home everywhere. For this is the secret of successful sauntering.

Thoreau’s suggested etymology for saunterer as stemming from ‘à la Sainte Terre’ is appealing and was popular in his day, but there seems to be no support for it in dictionaries.

The derivation is usually described as uncertain but likely to be from the French s’aventurer, to venture oneself, or from ME santren, to muse, which is also given as an obsolete meaning of saunter. Pursuing santren further leads to ‘sawntrelle’, one who pretends to holiness or sainthood, with sauntering perhaps being a back formation from this. The saunterer gave the appearance of wandering about musing on holy matters. This is close to Thoreau’s derivation in meaning, but not in etymology.

wwh, thanks for posting the passage from Thoreau. I remember reading his essay on walking about 30 years ago--and it's one of his best. Who cares whether the etymology is questionable? It's still charming--or charmed.

I think of the dogs about Rocky Run here as being the blessed spirits--they cruise the countryside, most fairly safely since people here don't drive too fast. I think about how they take in the day--are out in it--at ease in it. And I've often thought about Thoreau's comments on the art of walking in looking at the various hounds on the roadside when I come home from work.

Thoreau might write in that essay that he walks a minimum of four hours a day--walking being as necessary to his mindset as reading.

But I do like the connection between sauntering and holiness--ideal connection between action taken and propensity toward transcendentalism.

I don't know when present methods of etymology began. I saw one silly thinng in his etymology, that the kids started it. Those kids would have been speaking French, not English.