different between wander vs noctivagant

English

Etymology

From Middle English wandren, wandrien, from Old English wandrian (“to wander, roam, fly around, hover; change; stray, err”), from Proto-Germanic *wandr?n? (“to wander”), from Proto-Indo-European *wend?- (“to turn, wind”), equivalent to wend +? -er (frequentative suffix). Cognate with Scots wander (“to wander”), German wandern (“to wander, roam, hike, migrate”), Swedish vandra (“to wander, hike”).

Pronunciation

• (Received Pronunciation) IPA^(key): /?w?nd?/
• (General American) IPA^(key): /?w?nd?/
• (West Midlands, especially Birmingham) IPA^(key): /?w?nd?/, IPA^(key): /?w?nd?/
• Rhymes: -?nd?(?)
• Hyphenation: wan?der

Verb

wander (third-person singular simple present wanders, present participle wandering, simple past and past participle wandered)

1. (intransitive) To move without purpose or specified destination; often in search of livelihood.

   • They wandered about in sheepskins and goatskins.

   • “A tight little craft,” was Austin’s invariable comment on the matron; […]. ¶ Near her wandered her husband, orientally bland, invariably affable, and from time to time squinting sideways, as usual, in the ever-renewed expectation that he might catch a glimpse of his stiff, retroussé moustache.

   Synonyms: err, roam

2. (intransitive) To stray; stray from one's course; err.
   • Bible, Psalms cxix.10:

     O, let me not wander from thy commandments.

3. (intransitive) To commit adultery.

   Synonym: cheat

4. (intransitive) To go somewhere indirectly or at varying speeds; to move in a curved path.
5. (intransitive) Of the mind, to lose focus or clarity of argument or attention.

   Synonym: drift

Conjugation

Derived terms

Translations

Noun

wander (countable and uncountable, plural wanders)

1. (countable) The act or instance of wandering.

2. (uncountable) The situation where a value or signal etc. deviates from the correct or normal value.

   Hyponym: polar wander

   baseline wander in ECG signals

Translations

Anagrams

• Andrew, Darwen, Warden, drawne, warden, warned

German

Pronunciation

Verb

wander

1. inflection of wandern:
   1. first-person singular present
   2. singular imperative

English

Etymology

From Late Latin noctivagans, from noctivagare, from Latin nocti- (“night”) + participle form of vagari (“to wander”).

Pronunciation

• (UK) IPA^(key): /n?k?t?v???nt/

Adjective

noctivagant (comparative more noctivagant, superlative most noctivagant)

1. Walking or wandering in the nighttime, nightwandering. [from 17th c.]
   • 1823, James Hogg, The Three Perils of Woman; Or, Love, Leasing and Jealousy: A Series of Domestic Scottish Tales, E. Duyckinck (1823), p. 145:

     "'[…] I therefore think, Sarah, that the incommensurability of the crime with the effect, completely warrants the supersaliency of this noctivagant delinquent.'"

   • 1967, Walter Hamilton, Parodies of the Works of English & American Authors, Johnson Reprint Corporation (1967), p. 195:

     "Over the city, the suburb, the slum / He rambled from pillar to post, / And backward and forward, observant, though dumb, / As a fleetly noctivagant ghost."

   • 1982, TC Boyle, Water Music, Penguin 2006, p. 363:

     Unhappily, we lost the big fellow, Smirke, to noctivagant predators some days back [...].

   • 2003, Alan Wall, The School of Night, St. Martin's Press (2003), p. 223–224:

     "Not merely nocturnal but noctivagant, a nightwalker, a prowler, a nomad of the midnight streets, attempting to abolish the distinction between the light that comes from outside and the sort that shines within."

Quotations

• For quotations using this term, see Citations:noctivagant.

Translations

See also

• mundivagant
• solivagant

References

• "noctivagant" in A Complete Dictionary of the English Language, Both with Regard to Sound and Meaning, Thomas Sheridan, 1790.