Plank n.
1. A broad piece of sawed timber, differing from a board only in being thicker. See Board.
2. Fig.: That which supports or upholds, as a board does a swimmer.
His charity is a better plank than the faith of an intolerant and bitter-minded bigot. --Southey.
3. One of the separate articles in a declaration of the principles of a party or cause; as, a plank in the national platform. [Cant]
Plank road, or Plank way, a road surface formed of planks. [U.S.]
To walk the plank, to walk along a plank laid across the bulwark of a ship, until one overbalances it and falls into the sea; -- a method of disposing of captives practiced by pirates.
Walk, v. t.
1. To pass through, over, or upon; to traverse; to perambulate; as, to walk the streets.
As we walk our earthly round. --Keble.
2. To cause to walk; to lead, drive, or ride with a slow pace; as, to walk one's horses; to walk the dog. “ I will rather trust . . . a thief to walk my ambling gelding.”
3. To subject, as cloth or yarn, to the fulling process; to full. [Obs. or Scot.]
4. Sporting To put or keep (a puppy) in a walk; to train (puppies) in a walk. [Cant]
5. To move in a manner likened to walking. [Colloq.]
She walked a spinning wheel into the house, making it use first one and then the other of its own spindling legs to achieve progression rather than lifting it by main force. --C. E. Craddock.
To walk one's chalks, to make off; take French leave.
To walk the plank, to walk off the plank into the water and be drowned; -- an expression derived from the practice of pirates who extended a plank from the side of a ship, and compelled those whom they would drown to walk off into the water; figuratively, to vacate an office by compulsion.