Lingerstride

lingerstride (LING-ger-stryde), noun. The deliberately slowed walk you adopt on an otherwise empty pavement so that you never have to overtake the stranger ahead of you. You were walking at a perfectly normal speed until you noticed them, a few metres in front, moving just a little more slowly than you. Now you face a choice: pass them, or fall back. Most people fall back, and a lingerstride begins, often lasting far longer than the walk itself was ever meant to take.

The word joins linger, to remain somewhere reluctantly, with stride, which is precisely what you are failing to do. It is one of those compounds English assembles when it needs a word in a hurry and is not fussy about how it sounds. The past tense is lingerstrode, which feels about right, because by the time you are using the past tense you have usually gone the wrong way and are too embarrassed to turn round.

Overtaking a stranger on foot means approaching from behind, passing close and briefly matching their speed, which somehow feels like the most alarming thing one pedestrian can do to another. So instead you slow down. You develop a sudden interest in a hedge. You check a phone that has nothing new on it. You stop to read a notice on a lamppost about a lost cat that was found years ago. Anything, in short, rather than those few awkward seconds side by side.

Usage: “We lingerstrode behind a man carrying a bag of leeks for eleven minutes, and at the end of it we had gone completely the wrong way.” Advanced practitioners can hold a lingerstride for an entire street, matching the other person’s pace almost exactly while appearing completely unhurried. It ends only when one of you turns off, occasionally into a road you never wanted, having committed too thoroughly to the performance to admit it.

Behind the joke is something almost everyone does. Walking close behind a stranger, especially on a quiet street, can feel awkward for both people, and many of us instinctively try to keep a comfortable distance. Speeding up to pass feels pushy, while dropping back feels polite, even when it costs us time. It is a small, silent piece of courtesy that plays out on pavements everywhere, usually without either person ever realising that the other was doing exactly the same.

So the next time you find yourself caught in a lingerstride, there is a simple way out. Pass kindly and briskly, perhaps with a quick sorry or a friendly nod, and carry on at your own speed. The person in front will almost certainly be relieved, since there is every chance they had noticed you and were beginning a lingerstride of their own. Then, at last, you can both get where you were going, which, with any luck, is not the leek shop.