[f. STALK v.1 + -ING2.] That stalks.
† 1. Stealthy. Obs.
a. 1400. Pol., Rel., & L. Poems (1903), 254. [Death is] Stille and eke stalkinge.
2. Walking with great strides.
1560. Phaër, Æneid, IX. (1562), F f ij b. With stalking doubtful steps.
1581. A. Hall, Iliad, III. 45. Paris with stalking pace aduauncde himself to the Greekes warde.
1590. Spenser, F. Q., I. vii. 10. His [the giant Orgoglio’s] stalking steps are stayde Vpon a snaggy Oke.
1607. Puritan, III. v. 84. Haue you neuer seene a stalking-stamping Player.
1700. Dryden, Ovid’s Met., XIII. Acis, Pol. & Gal., 44. Thus, warn’d in vain, with stalking pace he strode.
1757. Smollett, Reprisal, I. vi. 18. That proud, stalking Highlander.
1909. Crockett, My Two Edinburghs, Forword. We yet bore the same name, that long-legged, stalking, wonder-stricken boy of fifteen—and I.
b. said of long-legged birds.
1697. Dryden, Virg. Georg., I. 413. That’s the proper Time … For stalking Cranes to set the guileful Snare.
1847. Gloss. Heraldry, 294. Stalking, walking: a term applied to long-legged birds.
c. of ghosts. Also fig. of baleful agencies.
1697. Dryden, Virg. Past., VIII. 142. To call from tombs the stalking Ghosts.
1792. Mary Wollstonecraft, Rights Wom., vi. 266. Like some other stalking mischiefs.
1831. Gen. P. Thompson, Exerc. (1842), I. 363. The grand stalking wrong, that was at the bottom of the well or ill directed resistance of the community.
† d. fig. Of style, etc.: Pompous, grandiloquent. Obs.
1601. B. Jonson, Poetaster, III. iv. Goe, he pens high, loftie, in a new stalking straine.
1806. W. Taylor, in Ann. Rev., IV. 612. The stalking pomp of theatrical declamation.
Hence Stalkingly adv.
1891. Meredith, One of our Conq., II. v. 124. Contempt of any supposed affectation, which was not ostentatiously, stalkingly practised to subdue the sex.
