wander
Definitions
General English
Cars & Driving
- noun the tendency of a vehicle to stray from its steered course; a fault caused by incorrect tyre pressure, worn steering linkage, etc.
Electronics
- To move or fluctuate in a random or otherwise irregular manner. Said, for instance, of the movement of the needle of a dial.
- In radars, rapid fluctuations in the apparent location of a scanned object. Such variations oscillate around the mean position of said object. Also called scintillation (5), target glint, or target scintillation.
Travel
- verb to walk about without any special direction
Origin & History of “wander”
To wander is etymologically to ‘turn’ off the correct path. The word comes, together with German wandern, from a prehistoric west Germanic *wandrōjan, which was derived from the base *wand-, *wend- ‘turn’ (source also of English wand, went, etc). The German compound wanderlust, literally ‘travel-desire’, was borrowed into English at the beginning of the 20th century.
