wanderer

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”).

• (General American) IPA^(key): /ˈwɑndəɹɚ/
• (Received Pronunciation) IPA^(key): /ˈwɒndəɹə/

• Audio (US):

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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.

• See Thesaurus:vagabond

• nerdwear, warrened, rewarned