Will Flewelling’s Reviews > Lawrence in Arabia: War, Deceit, Imperial Folly, and the Making of the Modern Middle East > Status Update

Funny, I recently looked up peripatetic, too. Itinerant - “In Latin, iter means "way" or "journey." That root was the parent of the Late Latin verb itinerari, meaning "to journey.") A dictionary is full of rabbit holes, no? imitative in color or form

Confirming “peri-“ meant around, I also discover Peri is the name of a supernatural being in Persian folklore descended from fallen angels and excluded from paradise until penance is accomplished.

patetico: adverb (or adjective)
pa·​te·​ti·​co pəˈtātēˌkō
: with feeling : MOVINGLY —used as a direction in music.

Sooo peripatetic is sort of like when a person movingly journeys with feeling (hither and tither acc to Webster).

Please pardon the random intrusion on your status update. Carry on in Arabia.

@Katie : it’s an accurate descriptor, then, because T. E. Lawrence was so excited about medieval fortress architecture that after completing a 2,400 mile bicycle tour of castles in France, he journeyed off to WALK the deserts of Arabia ALONE to analyze the forts there for an undergraduate history thesis— determining whether Europeans borrowed from Byzantine/Ottoman designs, or vice versa.

Unbelievable now, even more so in 1908-1910!