Somewhat arch. [f. WAY sb.1 + FARING vbl. sb., after WAYFARING a.] Journeying, travelling; an instance of this. Also fig.
1536. Primer Eng. & Lat., Commend. (Rouen), 149 b. Thy iustifications were to me songes in ye place of my wayfaring.
1540. Palsgr., Acolastus, II. iii. L iv. Wherfore comest thou a wayfarynge into this countrey…?
1548. Udall, Erasm. Par. Acts ii. 22–28. He him selfe went on wayfarynge frome place to place.
1561. T. Norton, Calvin’s Inst., III. xxv. (1634), 484. To us the onely and perfect felicitie is knowne even in this earthly waifaring.
a. 1677. Barrow, Wks. (1686), III. Serm. xv. 178. The Scripture aptly resembles our life to a wayfaring, a condition of travel and pilgrimage.
1818. Keats, Endym., I. 132. That I may dare, in wayfaring, To stammer where old Chaucer used to sing.
1832. W. Irving, Alhambra (1851), 122. To hear a mass and put up a prayer for a prosperous wayfaring across the Sierra.
1840. Dickens, Old C. Shop, xlii. Gipsy camps they had passed in their wayfaring.
1881. O’Shaughnessy, Songs of a Worker, 42. A certain traveller, sad and … worn With wayfaring.
b. Comb., as wayfaring-journey, -life, -sketch; † wayfaring-book, an itinerary; † wayfaring-shrub = WAYFARING-TREE.
1549. in Strype, Eccl. Mem. (1721), III. App. lxxxiii. 289. Give us Grace to forget this Way-faring Journey, and to remember our proper and true Country.
1610. Holland, Camden’s Brit., I. 204. No farther this way did Antonine specifie any place in his way-faring book.
1614. Lithgow, Trav., B 4. Some notable illusions … which I found in my wayfaring iourney.
1731. Miller, Gard. Dict., s.v. Viscum, The Bark of our Lantone or Way-faring Shrub.
1847. Miss F. Skene (title), Wayfaring Sketches among the Greeks and Turks.
1889. Lucy Toulmin Smith (title), English Wayfaring Life in the Middle Ages [trans. J. J. Jusserand La Vie nomade].
