A career? To career?
I’ve long been fascinated by the apparent disconnect between career as a noun and career as a verb, and have finally stumbled across the link between them.
The former (according to Merriam-Webster): (1) ‘a profession for which one trains and which is undertaken as a permanent calling’ or (2) ‘a field for or pursuit of consecutive progressive achievement especially in public, professional, or business life’.
The latter (from the same source): ‘to go at top speed, especially in a headlong manner’.
But there is a connection, which Merriam-Webster also explains:
In medieval tournaments, jousting required knights to ride at full speed in short bursts, and the noun career (coming from Middle French carrière) was used to refer to such gallops as well as to the courses that knights rode. The related verb came to mean ‘to go at top speed.’ The familiar career, referring to one's job, originated from these uses.
Explains a lot (especially now jousting’s gone out of fashion).