Lingerstride

Lingerstride (n.) From linger, to remain somewhere reluctantly, and stride, which is precisely what you are failing to do. One of those compounds English assembles when it needs a word in a hurry and is not fussy about how it sounds.

The deliberately slowed walk you adopt on an otherwise empty pavement so that you never have to overtake the stranger ahead of you. Overtaking means passing close, at speed, from behind, which is the most alarming thing one pedestrian can legally do to another. So instead you slow down. You develop a sudden interest in a hedge. You check a phone that has nothing on it.

In use: We lingerstrode behind a man carrying a bag of leeks for eleven minutes, and at the end of it we had gone the wrong way entirely. The past tense is irregular, which feels about right.

Advanced practitioners can hold a lingerstride for a whole street, matching the other person's pace to within a few centimetres per second while appearing completely unhurried. It ends when one of you turns off — occasionally into a road you never wanted, having committed too thoroughly to the performance to admit it.