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wanderer

/ˈwɑndərər/
/ˈwɒndərə/
IPA guide

Other forms: wanderers

A wanderer is someone who roams from place to place. An adventurer exploring new lands without a set destination or a specific place to call home might be called a wanderer.

Someone walking through forests, crossing mountains, and discovering hidden villages, all without a specific plan, is a wanderer. A wanderer embraces the journey and the unknown. It is believed that the earliest humans were wanderers, nomadic hunter-gatherers who traveled to where the food was. Some say that we are all wanderers in a sense, roving the universe while searching for meaning and happiness. As the renowned astronomer Carl Sagan put it, "Exploration is in our nature. We began as wanderers, and we are wanderers still."

Definitions of wanderer
  1. noun
    someone who leads a wandering unsettled life
    see moresee less
    types:
    nomad
    a member of a people who have no permanent home but move about according to the seasons
    drifter, floater, vagabond, vagrant
    a wanderer who has no established residence or visible means of support
    beachcomber
    a vagrant living on a beach
    Bedouin, Beduin
    a member of a nomadic tribe of Arabs
    Bushman
    a member of the race of nomadic hunters and gatherers who live in southern Africa
    Hun
    a member of a nomadic people who invaded Europe in the 4th century
    Saracen
    (historically) a member of the nomadic people of the Syrian and Arabian deserts at the time of the Roman Empire
    Scythian
    a member of the ancient nomadic people inhabiting Scythia
    sundowner
    a tramp who habitually arrives at sundown
    bum, hobo, tramp
    a disreputable vagrant
    type of:
    traveler, traveller
    a person who changes location
  2. noun
    a computer program that prowls the internet looking for publicly accessible resources that can be added to a database; the database can then be searched with a search engine
    synonyms: spider
    see moresee less
    type of:
    computer program, computer programme, program, programme
    (computer science) a sequence of instructions that a computer can interpret and execute
Pronunciation
US
/ˈwɑndərər/
UK
/ˈwɒndərə/
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DISCLAIMER: These example sentences appear in various news sources and books to reflect the usage of the word ‘wanderer'. Views expressed in the examples do not represent the opinion of Vocabulary.com or its editors. Send us feedback
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