Wandering

How to spell wandering

9 letters · 3 syllables

How to pronounce wandering

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does wandering mean?

1. adjectiveMoving about with no fixed course, route, or purpose.
2. nounThe act of travelling or moving about from place to place without a settled destination.

Wandering in a sentence

• adjective

  The wandering stray dog finally settled outside the bakery.

• noun

  Years of wandering across the continent gave him a vast store of stories.

• adjective

  During the dull meeting her wandering attention kept drifting to the window.

• noun

  After a long day of aimless wandering through the old town, she returned to the hotel exhausted.

Where does wandering come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

This word grows from the Old English verb wandrian, which meant to roam or move about with no fixed destination. That verb belongs to a wider Germanic family: it is closely related to the modern German wandern, meaning to hike or ramble, and it shares an ancient root with wend, the old verb for turning or going (the source of the past tense 'went'). The underlying idea was always one of winding, turning movement rather than a straight path, which is why a wandering route is a meandering one. The -ing ending, also native to English, turns the verb into the present participle, the descriptive adjective, and the noun all at once. A useful spelling note is that wandering has a single d and an unstressed middle syllable, which is what trips writers who otherwise know the word well; it is also worth keeping apart from wondering, which sounds different and means thinking or being curious.

How the word is built

• wander (Old English wandrian: to roam about)
• -ing (forming participle/adjective/noun)