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ENGLISH · A WORD WITH POSSIBILITIES

wander.

To move without purpose or specified destination; often in search of livelihood.

6 characters2 syllables approx.English language

Meaning & usage

verb/ˈwɒndə/Received-Pronunciation/ˈwɑndɚ/General-American/ˈwʊndə//ˈwʌndə/
  1. To move without purpose or specified destination; often in search of livelihood.

    intransitive
    to wander over the fields
  2. To stray; stray from one's course; err.

    intransitive
    A writer wanders from his subject.
  3. To commit adultery.

    intransitive
  4. To go somewhere indirectly or at varying speeds; to move in a curved path.

    intransitive
  5. Of the mind, to lose focus or clarity of argument or attention.

    intransitive
Where this word comes from

From Middle English wandren, from Old English wandrian (“to wander, roam, fly around, hover; change; stray, err”), from Proto-West Germanic *wandarōn (“to wander”), from *wandōn (“to turn, change”) + *-rōn (frequentative suffix). Cognate with Scots wander (“to wander”), German wandern (“to wander, roam, hike, migrate”), Dutch wandelen (“to wander, roam, hike, migrate”), Danish vandre (“to wander, roam, hike, migrate”), Swedish vandra (“to wander, hike”).

noun/ˈwɒndə/Received-Pronunciation/ˈwɑndɚ/General-American/ˈwʊndə//ˈwʌndə/
  1. An act or instance of wandering.

    countable
    to go for a wander in the park
  2. Deviation from a correct or normal value.

    uncountable
Where this word comes from

From Middle English wandren, from Old English wandrian (“to wander, roam, fly around, hover; change; stray, err”), from Proto-West Germanic *wandarōn (“to wander”), from *wandōn (“to turn, change”) + *-rōn (frequentative suffix). Cognate with Scots wander (“to wander”), German wandern (“to wander, roam, hike, migrate”), Dutch wandelen (“to wander, roam, hike, migrate”), Danish vandre (“to wander, roam, hike, migrate”), Swedish vandra (“to wander, hike”).

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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.