rover.
One who roves: a person or animal that travels around, especially over a wide area, without a fixed destination; a nomad, a roamer, a wanderer.
Meaning & usage
One who roves: a person or animal that travels around, especially over a wide area, without a fixed destination; a nomad, a roamer, a wanderer.
A restless, unsteady person who does not settle down; specifically (historical), a flirtatious, unfaithful man; a rake.
She is a rover and dislikes any sort of ties, physical or emotional.
Also rover ticket: a person who has a ticket for an event, performance, etc., but no assigned seat, and so has to find a place to sit or stand.
A small manned or unmanned land vehicle for exploring extraterrestrial bodies.
A defensive back position whose coverage responsibilities are a combination of those of a cornerback, linebacker, and safety; also, a player playing this position.
Chiefly in the plural in the form to shoot at rovers: a target randomly selected by an archer, usually for practice; also, a fixed target for practising long-distance shooting.
A type of heavy arrow used for long-distance shooting.
A position that is one of three of a team's followers making up a ruck, who follow the ball around the ground; also, a player playing this position, who is generally fast and skilful at receiving the ball, and formerly of shorter stature.
In full rover ball: a ball which has passed through all the hoops and would peg out if it hit the stake but is continued in play to help fellow players or obstruct opposing players; also, the player of such a ball.
Alternative letter-case form of Rover (“an early type of safety bicycle with a lower riding position than previous models”).
A remotely operated underwater vehicle (ROUV) or remotely operated vehicle (ROV).
Alternative letter-case form of Rover (“Short for Land Rover (“a type of road vehicle capable of being driven off-road”)”).
The tenth defensive player in slow-pitch softball.
A forward whose responsibility was to feed the scrum and protect the scrum-half; the position was abandoned after a 1931 rule change.
Alternative letter-case form of Rover (“Short for Rover Scout (“a member of a Scouting organization for young men too old to be Boy Scouts”)”).
Especially in rover ticket: a type of pass, ticket, etc., that allows the holder unlimited travel on certain types of public transport for specified periods.
In full rover patrol: an airborne reconnaissance patrol.
Where this word comes from
From rove (“to roam, wander; (archery) to shoot an arrow randomly”) + -er (suffix forming agent nouns from verbs). Rove is derived from Late Middle English *roven, rove (“to wander”); further etymology uncertain, possibly an English Midlands variant of Northern England raven, rave (“to rove, stray, wander”), possibly from Old Norse ráfa (“to roam, wander”) (although rove and rave are only attested much later), possibly from Proto-Germanic *wabōną, *wabjaną (“to cause to weave; to entangle, wrap”), from Proto-Indo-European *webʰ- (“to braid, weave”).
A pirate.
A pirate ship.
A plunderer, a raider, a robber.
Where this word comes from
From Late Middle English rover, rovere (“pirate”), borrowed from Middle Dutch rôver, rôvere (from rôven (“to pillage, plunder, rob”) + -er (suffix forming agent nouns from verbs)), or Middle Low German rōver (“plunderer, robber; pirate, reaver”) (from rōven (“to pillage, plunder, rob”) + -er (suffix forming agent nouns from verbs)), both ultimately from Proto-Germanic *raubōną (“to plunder, rob, steal”), from Proto-Indo-European *Hrewp- (“to break, tear (up)”). Doublet of reaver. cognates * Danish røver (“brigand, highwayman, robber, thief”) * German Räuber * Norwegian røver (“brigand, highwayman, robber, thief”)
One who forms cotton, wool, or other fibres into rovings (“long, narrow bundles of fibres”), specifically using a roving frame in a mill.
A machine used to make rovings, especially a roving frame.
Where this word comes from
From rove (“to card (wool or other fibres)”) + -er (suffix forming agent nouns from verbs). Rove is probably a variant of row (“(Scotland, obsolete, rare) to make (cotton, wool, etc.) into rovings”), probably from row (“(Ireland, Scotland, archaic) rove or roving of cotton, wool, etc.”), probably a variant of roll (“thing which is rolled up”), ultimately from Latin rota (“wheel”) and Proto-Indo-European *Hreth₂- (“to roll; to run”).
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Definitions, grammatical labels, IPA, etymology and examples: Wiktionary contributors, extracted by Kaikki / Wiktextract. Adapted under CC BY-SA 4.0. Selected fields and authored examples are shown; third-party quotations and audio are omitted. See contributor history.
Last enriched 2026-09-10. Definitions are in English. Romanizations are shown when supplied by the source; syllable estimates are omitted for unsupported scripts.