ROVING

Pronunciation (US):

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 Dictionary entry overview: What does roving mean? 

• ROVING (noun)
  The noun ROVING has 1 sense:

1. travelling about without any clear destination

  Familiarity information: ROVING used as a noun is very rare.

• ROVING (adjective)
  The adjective ROVING has 1 sense:

1. migratory

  Familiarity information: ROVING used as an adjective is very rare.

 Dictionary entry details 

• ROVING (noun)

Sense 1

Meaning:

Travelling about without any clear destination

Classified under:

Nouns denoting acts or actions

Synonyms:

roving; vagabondage; wandering

Context example:

she followed him in his wanderings and looked after him

Hypernyms ("roving" is a kind of...):

travel; traveling; travelling (the act of going from one place to another)

Hyponyms (each of the following is a kind of "roving"):

drifting (aimless wandering from place to place)

Derivation:

rove (move about aimlessly or without any destination, often in search of food or employment)

• ROVING (adjective)

Sense 1

Meaning:

Migratory

Synonyms:

mobile; nomadic; peregrine; roving; wandering

Context example:

wandering tribes

Similar:

unsettled (not settled or established)

 Context examples 

"You are a strange child, Miss Jane," she said, as she looked down at me; "a little roving, solitary thing: and you are going to school, I suppose?"

(Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë)

Right easy were the Montacutes of their Castle of Twynham, and little had they to dread from roving galley or French squadron, while Lady Mary Loring had the ordering of it.

(The White Company, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

I'm roving about so, it's impossible to be regular, you know.

(Little Women, by Louisa May Alcott)

Thus she went roving on through the wide world, and looked neither to the right hand nor to the left, nor took any rest, for seven years.

(Fairy Tales, by The Brothers Grimm)

Shall I ever recall that street of Canterbury on a market-day, without recalling him, as he walked back with us; expressing, in the hardy roving manner he assumed, the unsettled habits of a temporary sojourner in the land; and looking at the bullocks, as they came by, with the eye of an Australian farmer!

(David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens)

You should not be roving about now; it looks very ill.

(Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë)

I love an ash arrow pierced with cornel-wood for a roving shaft.

(The White Company, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

Last January, rid of all mistresses—in a harsh, bitter frame of mind, the result of a useless, roving, lonely life—corroded with disappointment, sourly disposed against all men, and especially against all womankind (for I began to regard the notion of an intellectual, faithful, loving woman as a mere dream), recalled by business, I came back to England.

(Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë)

As lord of the marches and guardian of an exposed country-side, there was little rest for him even in times of so-called peace, and his whole life was spent in raids and outfalls upon the Brabanters, late-comers, flayers, free companions, and roving archers who wandered over his province.

(The White Company, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

I joined them because Margery Alspaye, of Bolder, married Crooked Thomas of Ringwood, and left a certain John of Hordle in the cold, for that he was a ranting, roving blade who was not to be trusted in wedlock.

(The White Company, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)