Wiktionary

wanderer

See also: Wanderer

English

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Etymology

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From Middle English wanderere, wandrere, wanderare, equivalent to wander +‎ -er. Cognate with Scots wanderer, wandirer (“wanderer”), Dutch wandelaar (“walker, hiker”), German Wanderer (“wanderer”), Danish vandrer (“wanderer”), Swedish vandrare (“wanderer”), Norwegian vandrer (“wanderer”).

Pronunciation

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Noun

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wanderer (plural wanderers)

  1. One who wanders, who travels aimlessly.
    • 1892, James Yoxall, chapter 5, in The Lonely Pyramid:
      The desert storm was riding in its strength; the travellers lay beneath the mastery of the fell simoom. […] Roaring, leaping, pouncing, the tempest raged about the wanderers, drowning and blotting out their forms with sandy spume.
    • 1898, Leon H. Vincent, The Bibliotaph And Other People:
      The bibliotaph buries books; not literally, but sometimes with as much effect as if he had put his books underground. There are several varieties of him. The dog-in-the-manger bibliotaph is the worst; he uses his books but little himself, and allows others to use them not at all. On the other hand, a man may be a bibliotaph simply from inability to get at his books. He may be homeless, a bachelor, a denizen of boarding-houses, a wanderer upon the face of the earth.
    • 1968, Christopher Hodder-Williams, “Hands”, in Fistful of Digits, London: Coronet Books, published 1972, →ISBN, page 125:
      She was, in fact, constitutionally impervious to statistics and preferred to study the be-headphoned group of fifteen or so lethargic wanderers who were taking even less notice of the remorseless squawkings than she was.
  2. Any of various far-migrating nymphalid butterflies of the genus Danaus.
  3. (colloquial) The wandering albatross, Diomedea exulans.

Synonyms

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Derived terms

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Translations

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Anagrams

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