wandering definition english

• TheFreeDictionary
• Word / Article
• Starts with
• Free toolbar & extensions
• Word of the Day
• Free content

wan•der•ing

• evagation - Means mental wandering or digression, also a digression in speech or writing.
• mundivagant - Means "wandering around the world."
• vagation - The action of wandering, straying, or departing from the proper or regular course.
• wanderjahr - Literally German for "wander year," it refers to a year of wandering or travel.

wan·der·ing

• bird of passage
• Diomedea exulans
• Wanamaker John
• Wanchüan
• Wand of peace
• Wanda Landowska
• wander about or around
• wander back
• wander plug
• wandering albatross
• Wandering cell
• Wandering Jew
• Wandering kidney
• Wandering liver
• Wandering mouse
• wandering nerve
• Wandering spider
• wanderingly
• Wang An Shi
• Wang Jing Wei
• Wang Jingwei
• wander off from us
• wander off from you
• Wander, Karl Friedrich Wilhelm
• wandered about
• wandered around
• wandered away
• wandered away from
• wandered from
• wandered in
• wandered into
• wandered off
• wandered off from
• Wanderer Butterfly
• Wanderer Class Owners' Association
• Wanderers' Rest Humane Association
• wandering about
• wandering abscess
• wandering albatrosses
• wandering around
• Wandering Around Being Visible
• wandering atrial pacemaker
• wandering away
• wandering away from
• wandering cell
• wandering dune
• wandering erysipelas
• Wandering Eye
• wandering from
• Wandering Gallbladder
• wandering goiter
• Wandering Hand Trouble
• wandering hands
• Facebook Share

Words and phrases

Personal account.

• Access or purchase personal subscriptions
• Get our newsletter
• Save searches
• Set display preferences

Institutional access

Sign in with library card

Sign in with username / password

Recommend to your librarian

Institutional account management

Sign in as administrator on Oxford Academic

wandering noun

• Hide all quotations

What does the noun wandering mean?

There are eight meanings listed in OED's entry for the noun wandering . See ‘Meaning & use’ for definitions, usage, and quotation evidence.

wandering has developed meanings and uses in subjects including

Entry status

OED is undergoing a continuous programme of revision to modernize and improve definitions. This entry has not yet been fully revised.

How common is the noun wandering ?

How is the noun wandering pronounced, british english, u.s. english, where does the noun wandering come from.

Earliest known use

Middle English

The earliest known use of the noun wandering is in the Middle English period (1150—1500).

OED's earliest evidence for wandering is from before 1300, in Cursor Mundi: a Northumbrian poem of the 14th century .

wandering is formed within English, by derivation.

Etymons: wander v. , ‑ing suffix 1 .

Nearby entries

• wandclot, n. 1397
• wanded, adj. 1567–
• wandelard, n. 1338
• wander, n. 1843–
• wander, v. Old English–
• wanderable, adj. 1906–
• wander-bird, n. 1924–
• wander-book, n. 1844–
• wandered, adj. c1420–
• wanderer, n. c1440–
• wandering, n. a1300–
• wandering, adj. Old English–
• wandering Jew, n. 1622–
• Wanderjahr, n. 1893–
• wanderlust, n. 1902–
• wanderment, n. 1597–1605
• Wanderobo, n. 1902–
• wanderoo, n. 1681–
• wander-plug, n. 1923–
• wander-soul, n. 1917–
• wander-spirit, n. 1927–

Thank you for visiting Oxford English Dictionary

To continue reading, please sign in below or purchase a subscription. After purchasing, please sign in below to access the content.

Meaning & use

Pronunciation, compounds & derived words, entry history for wandering, n..

wandering, n. was first published in 1921; not yet revised.

wandering, n. was last modified in July 2023.

Revision of the OED is a long-term project. Entries in oed.com which have not been revised may include:

• corrections and revisions to definitions, pronunciation, etymology, headwords, variant spellings, quotations, and dates;
• new senses, phrases, and quotations which have been added in subsequent print and online updates.

Revisions and additions of this kind were last incorporated into wandering, n. in July 2023.

Earlier versions of this entry were published in:

OED First Edition (1921)

• Find out more

OED Second Edition (1989)

• View wandering, vbl. n. in OED Second Edition

Please submit your feedback for wandering, n.

Please include your email address if you are happy to be contacted about your feedback. OUP will not use this email address for any other purpose.

Citation details

Factsheet for wandering, n., browse entry.

• Daily Crossword
• Word Puzzle
• Word Finder
• Word of the Day
• Synonym of the Day
• Word of the Year
• Language stories
• All featured
• Gender and sexuality
• All pop culture
• Grammar Coach ™
• Writing hub
• Grammar essentials
• Commonly confused
• All writing tips
• Pop culture
• Writing tips

Advertisement

[ won -der ]

verb (used without object)

to wander over the earth.

Synonyms: stroll , range

The river wanders among the rocks.

Synonyms: saunter

Foothills wandered off to the south.

• to move, pass, or turn idly, as the hand or the eyes.

His attention wandered as the speaker droned on.

During the storm the ship wandered from its course.

Synonyms: veer , swerve

Let me not wander from Thy Commandments.

Synonyms: rave , ramble

• (of a person with a mental disorder or cognitive impairment) to move about or walk in a seemingly aimless or random manner.

verb (used with object)

He wandered the streets.

• Mechanics. the drift of a gyroscope or a similar device.
• also tr to move or travel about, in, or through (a place) without any definite purpose or destination
• to proceed in an irregular course; meander
• to go astray, as from a path or course
• (of the mind, thoughts, etc) to lose concentration or direction
• to think or speak incoherently or illogically
• the act or an instance of wandering

Discover More

Derived forms.

• ˈwandering , adjective noun
• ˈwanderer , noun
• ˈwanderingly , adverb

Other Words From

• wander·er noun
• outwander verb (used with object)

Word History and Origins

Origin of wander 1

Example Sentences

If there’s no Wander Walk in the neighborhood, your kids can create something similar.

Hear from the founders of innovative brands including WANDER Beauty, Topicals, Ettitude, GEENIE, GEM, Floyd and Goodfair.

As Yellowstone bears increasingly wander outside the sanctuary of the park, they run an ever-greater risk of getting shot.

Some kids are prone to letting their minds wander and daydreaming.

Save for the clip of heels as visitors wander around the gallery, the venue is silent.

Finally, I have to wander slightly off brief with my last two recommendations.

One can even rent out the villa here or wander down from the Arc de Triomphe and peek through the fence.

He allowed his mind to wander back into the past—back many years to the time when he had gone into the country to take a meal.

Of all the inhabitants of London chambers those are the most lonely who never wander away from London.

Sometimes Jehosophat's father opens the gate in the fence and lets the geese wander down to the pond.

Literally and figuratively, their lives seemed to wander through flowery pleasure-paths.

She appeared to wander in her mind, for sometimes her words were coherent, at other times she merely babbled.

Related Words

Definition of 'wander'

wander in British English

Wander in american english, examples of 'wander' in a sentence wander, trends of wander.

View usage for: All Years Last 10 years Last 50 years Last 100 years Last 300 years

Browse alphabetically wander

• wand reader
• wander aimlessly
• wander alone
• wander an aisle
• All ENGLISH words that begin with 'W'

Related terms of wander

• eyes wander
• wander plug
• polar wander
• View more related words

Quick word challenge

Quiz Review

Score: 0 / 5

Wordle Helper

Scrabble Tools

• Dictionaries home
• American English
• Collocations
• German-English
• Grammar home
• Practical English Usage
• Learn & Practise Grammar (Beta)
• Word Lists home
• My Word Lists
• Recent additions
• Resources home
• Text Checker

Definition of wander verb from the Oxford Advanced American Dictionary

Take your English to the next level

The Oxford Learner’s Thesaurus explains the difference between groups of similar words. Try it for free as part of the Oxford Advanced Learner’s Dictionary app

By Megan Specia

Reporting from London

Voters in England and Wales will cast ballots for mayors, council members and police commissioners on Thursday. And while the elections will, of course, focus on local issues like garbage collection and public safety, this vote is expected to have broader significance.

Why does this election matter?

Local elections, by their nature, are about who leads communities and ensures the delivery of certain public services. But many analysts believe the results of these elections will also serve as an important bellwether of general public opinion across England and of whether Prime Minister Rishi Sunak’s beleaguered Conservative Party has a chance of retaining power in a general election expected this fall.

The Conservatives face a fierce challenge from the opposition Labour Party, led by Keir Starmer.

The Conservatives won a third successive general election in 2019, but the accumulated discontent of 14 years in power — a period that included several changes of prime minister and political scandals — is weighing heavily: Labour has sustained double-digit leads in national opinion polls for more than a year.

About one-third of England’s council seats are being contested on Thursday, and 10 mayoral seats in major English metro areas, home to about a third of Britain’s population, are also up for election.

What can the local elections tell us about a general election?

The big questions are how widely Labour can advance and how far the Conservatives may fall back.

British local elections have plenty of quirks — turnout is often relatively low, and smaller parties and independent candidates can do disproportionately well. But Thursday’s voting includes contests across England and Wales, and if the opposition’s apparent strength is less than opinion polling has suggested, the results should reveal that.

These elections are also a test of some new voting rules, under the Elections Act of 2022. It is the first time that all voters will need to show photo identification, which some rights groups say could disproportionately affect marginalized communities . The same law also changed the rules for electing mayors and police commissioners: Those races are now first past the post , meaning each voter has one vote, and the single candidate who gets the most votes in each constituency wins. That replaces a type of preferential voting in which voters could indicate a second choice.

Who is running?

Labour and the Conservatives are running candidates nationwide, as are the centrist Liberal Democrats. The Green Party is also increasingly competitive in some local elections. But a rising competitor on the right — Reform U.K., founded by the Brexit campaigner Nigel Farage — is running relatively few candidates, especially for a party that now places third in many opinion polls.

The highest-profile candidates are three incumbent mayors. For Labour, there’s Sadiq Khan, who is seeking to become London’s first three-term mayor since the citywide post was created in 2000. On the Conservative side, the big names are Ben Houchen in Tees Valley and Andy Street in the West Midlands. To win re-election, they will likely need to strongly outperform their party, which both have done in the past.

There is one parliamentary special election, or by-election, in Blackpool South, a deprived seaside district where the Conservative lawmaker Scott Benton has stepped down amid a lobbying scandal . Labour held the seat until 2019 and has strong expectations of winning it back.

Overall, voters will be electing more than 2,500 council members as 107 councils hold scheduled elections and 48 hold by-elections. With so many seats to fill, the list of candidates is long, and some contests will be watched more closely than others.

Prof. Tony Travers, director of the Institute of Public Affairs at the London School of Economics, said he would be closely watching the races in North East Lincolnshire, Hartlepool and Dudley to gauge changes in sentiment in what is known as the “Red Wall” — former Labour strongholds that the Conservatives won under Boris Johnson in 2019.

What are the main issues?

The economy, health and immigration have emerged as the three key issues for voters in Britain, according to polling from YouGov, which tracks public sentiment . Still, in these types of elections, national priorities can sometimes be overshadowed by local issues and the candidates’ personalities.

In May 2023, when the last local elections were held, the Conservatives held 33 percent of all council seats in England, and Labour held 35 percent, becoming the party with the largest share of council seats for the first time since 2002.

The Institute for Government, an independent British think tank, has noted that the Conservatives have been preparing for “a primarily defensive election,” hoping to hold on to the few councils they control and retain seats in places where they are the largest party but lack an absolute majority.

Who is expected to win?

Local elections in Britain are notoriously hard to predict, but most analysts agree that the Conservatives will face a real challenge, especially since most of these races were last run in 2021, a high point for the party after the early success of Britain’s Covid vaccination program.

Prof. Sara B. Hobolt, from the London School of Economics, suggested in a recent briefing that the Conservatives could lose as many as 500 council seats.

Labour’s five incumbent mayors have looked well placed to retain their seats — though Mr. Khan’s last race in London was significantly tighter than polling suggested.

For the Conservatives, Mr. Houchen has a strong following in Tees Valley — he won 72.8 percent of the vote in 2021 — but appears to be in a closer race this time , and polls suggest that Mr. Street is slightly trailing his Labour opponent in the West Midlands. If both of those mayors are unseated, it could be a major blow to Mr. Sunak’s leadership.

When will we learn the results?

Some votes will be counted overnight on Thursday, with results early Friday, while others will be tallied by Friday or Saturday afternoon. Although there will be a sense of how the Conservatives are performing by Friday afternoon, some critical results will be slower to emerge.

In the closely watched mayoral races, only the Tees Valley result is expected on Friday. The authorities in London and the West Midlands both plan to announce their results on Saturday afternoon.

Where can I find more information?

Britain’s Electoral Commission, an independent body that oversees elections in the country, has an in-depth guide to the local elections , how voters can register, and other specific guidance. The Institute for Government has laid out in granular detail the key things to look out for in the elections.

The New York Times will also cover the results.

Megan Specia reports on Britain, Ireland and the Ukraine war for The Times. She is based in London. More about Megan Specia

Word of the Day

What it means.

Forfend is used in contexts relating to some kind of real or pretended danger or other unpleasantness. In humorous and ironic use, forfend typically appears in the phrase “heaven forfend,” and, like “heaven forbid,” expresses a usually ironic desire that something not happen or be done. In general use, if you forfend something unwanted or undesirable, you ward it off or prevent it; and if you forfend yourself from or against something, you protect or preserve yourself from it.

// Heaven forfend that people actually pick up dictionaries and read them!

// By studying your dictionary, you may forfend any risk of not knowing the meaning of a word.

// To forfend against the prospect of being at a loss for words, we recommend you read the Word of the Day daily.

See the entry >

forfend in Context

“Cigarette companies financed armies of letter and op-ed writers, think tank reports, and ‘expert’ testimony promoting the return of DDT. … Big Tobacco fought for the return of DDT, [Elena] Conis argues, because the pesticide made for such ‘a helpful scientific parable, one that, told just right, illustrated the problem of government regulation of private industry gone wrong.’ It was private companies, and not politicians—or, heaven forfend , the people—who should decide what products should be produced, and how.” — Scott W. Stern, The New Republic , 31 May 2022

Build your vocabulary! Get Word of the Day in your inbox every day.

Challenging standardized test words, vol. 2.

• The business’s new computer system proved not to be a panacea .
• Cure-all Secure space
• Obstacle Costly burden

Test your knowledge - and maybe learn something along the way.

You can make only 12 words. Pick the best ones!

Did You Know?

Forfend is an unusual word in that its most commonly used sense is considered archaic , meaning it survives in English chiefly in specialized uses. When forfend was first used in the 14th century, it meant “to forbid.” It still does but only in phrases, like “heaven forfend” or “God forfend,” that have an exaggeratedly old-timey ring to them. (The use is also typically humorous and/or ironic.) Put another way, substituting forfend for forbid in any other context would sound strange, as in “students are forfended from using cell phones in the classroom.” Other senses of forfend , including “to protect or preserve” and “to ward off or prevent,” are current, though much less common. The fend part of the word comes from the same Latin source as defend .

Test Your Vocabulary with M-W Quizzes

Famous Novels, First Lines Quiz

13-Letter Word Quiz

What Did You Just Call Me?

Guess the Curious Origins of These Everyday Words

Name That Flower

12-Letter Words Quiz

Name That Synonym

Rearrange the letters to form a synonym of forfend : TEVRA

More Words of the Day

Can you solve 4 words at once?

Subscribe to America's largest dictionary and get thousands more definitions and advanced search—ad free!

Games & Quizzes

• Cambridge Dictionary +Plus

Meaning of wondering in English

Your browser doesn't support HTML5 audio

wonder verb ( QUESTION )

• I wonder what the future holds for you and me.
• She wondered who'd sent her the mysterious email .
• I was wondering if you'd like to come to the cinema with me this evening ?
• I wonder what it was about her upbringing that made her so insecure .
• When did he last brush his teeth , she wondered.
• a brown study idiom
• agonize over/about something
• beard-stroking
• I/we'll (have to) see idiom
• in the cold light of day idiom
• introspection
• joined-up thinking
• run through someone's mind/head idiom
• scratch your head idiom
• self-contemplation
• self-exploration

You can also find related words, phrases, and synonyms in the topics:

wonder verb ( SURPRISE )

• flabbergasted
• goggle-eyed
• horror of horrors idiom
• open-mouthed
• palpitation
• pearl-clutching
• someone's jaw drops (open) idiom

Examples of wondering

In English, many past and present participles of verbs can be used as adjectives. Some of these examples may show the adjective use.

Word of the Day

a name someone uses instead of their real name, especially on a written work

Hidden in plain sight: words and phrases connected with hiding

Learn more with +Plus

• Recent and Recommended {{#preferredDictionaries}} {{name}} {{/preferredDictionaries}}
• Definitions Clear explanations of natural written and spoken English English Learner’s Dictionary Essential British English Essential American English
• Grammar and thesaurus Usage explanations of natural written and spoken English Grammar Thesaurus
• Pronunciation British and American pronunciations with audio English Pronunciation
• English–Chinese (Simplified) Chinese (Simplified)–English
• English–Chinese (Traditional) Chinese (Traditional)–English
• English–Dutch Dutch–English
• English–French French–English
• English–German German–English
• English–Indonesian Indonesian–English
• English–Italian Italian–English
• English–Japanese Japanese–English
• English–Norwegian Norwegian–English
• English–Polish Polish–English
• English–Portuguese Portuguese–English
• English–Spanish Spanish–English
• English–Swedish Swedish–English
• Dictionary +Plus Word Lists
• wonder (QUESTION)
• wonder (SURPRISE)
• All translations

To add wondering to a word list please sign up or log in.

Add wondering to one of your lists below, or create a new one.

{{message}}

Something went wrong.

There was a problem sending your report.