Also 5 wanderare, 6 Sc. wandirer, 6 wandreer, 6–7 wandrer, wand’rer. [f. WANDER v. + -ER1.]
1. A person or thing that is wandering, or that has long wandered (in various senses of the verb); one that is of roving habit or nature. Also fig. or in fig. context.
c. 1440. Promp. Parv., 515/1. Wanderare, vagus, vaga, vacabundus, profugus.
1540. Palsgr., Acolastus, II. iii. P ij. Seynge that she [sc. Fortune] is but a wandrer, that strayeth from place to place lyke a vacabunde.
1605. Shaks., Lear, III. ii. 44. The wrathfull Skies Gallow the very wanderers of the darke And make them keepe their Caues.
1622. Fletcher, Sea Voy., IV. Am I for this forsaken? a new love chosen, And my affections, like my fortunes, wanderers?
1712. Addison, Spect., No. 495, ¶ 8. Besides, the whole People is now a Race of such Merchants as are Wanderers by Profession.
1794. Coleridge, The Sigh, 20. In distant climes to roam, A wanderer from my native home.
1798. Wordsw., Lines Tintern Abbey, 56. O sylvan Wye! thou wanderer thro’ the woods.
1841. Miss Mitford, in L’Estrange, Life (1870), III. viii. 116. Gipsies and other wanderers pitch their tents around it in the nutting season.
1853. J. H. Newman, Hist. Sk. (1873), II. I. iii. 114. The Catholic Church was in the first instance a wanderer on the earth, and had nothing to attach her to its soil.
1855. Macaulay, Hist. Eng., xvi. III. 709. He had died as he had lived, an exile and a wanderer.
1857. Dickens, Dorrit, I. xxx. She don’t know what she means. She’s an idiot, a wanderer in her mind.
1914. A. S. Woodward, Guide Fossil Man (1915), 3. Such characteristic wanderers over the plains as horses, cattle, antelopes, deer and lions.
b. as tr. L. planēta or Gr. πλανήτης: A wandering star, planet.
1614. Tomkis, Albumazar, II. i. Your patron Mercury in his mysterious character, Holds all the markes of th’ other wanderers.
a. 1618. Sylvester, Little Bartas, 211. The Sun … Him, just betwixt Six Wand’rers hast thou plac’t, Which prance about Him with unequall haste.
a. 1641. Bp. Mountagu, Acts & Mon. (1642), 117. Even Planets or Wanderers keep course, and station.
1848. Bailey, Festus, 191. The worlds they call wanderers rolling on high, That enlighten the earth and enliven the sky.
1875. Jowett, Plato (ed. 2), III. 536. And God made the sun and moon and five other wanderers, as they are called.
† c. Hist. (See quot. 1903.) Obs.
1724. A. Shields, Life J. Renwick, 65, in Biogr. Presbyt. (1827), II. So many forces, Foot, Horse, and Dragoons, habitually flashed in Blood, being poured into all parts of the Country, where the Wanderers were most numerous.
1727. P. Walker, Life Peden, Ibid., I. 115. Foot and Horse of the Enemy being searching for Wanderers, as they were then called.
1816. Scott, Old Mort., vi. The Wanderer (to give Burley a title which was often conferred on his sect) began to make his horse ready.
1903. Harbottle, Dict. Hist. Allusions, 275. Wanderers, the Covenanters who left their homes to follow their dispossessed ministers in 1669 were so called.
2. Zool. Used as translation of various mod.L. terms of classification; a bird of the group Vagatores in Macgillivray’s system; one of the wandering spiders (Vacabundæ).
1837. Macgillivray, Brit. Birds, I. 48. That very important tribe of birds to which the name of Vagatores or Wanderers may be applied.
