Eardstapa

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. A person who travels from place to place without a fixed home or destination
2. Someone who wanders about aimlessly or roams without permanent settlement
3. A vagabond or itinerant person who journeys without fixed abode or purpose

Etymology: In Old English, "eardstapa" was a compound of "eard," meaning land, country, or dwelling place, and "stapa," a walker or stepper from the verb "stapan," to step. The result was a traveler, often one who has no fixed home. Old English poetry used it for a figure who roams the land without belonging to any settlement, a sense that gave the term a melancholy edge. Because "eard" could mean one's home as well as the wide earth, the compound carries a double meaning. The wanderer is defined by the place he has lost, and the word describes someone who walks over the land that once sheltered him. The term survives mainly in translations and scholarly discussion of the Old English elegy "The Wanderer," and modern English has no direct descendant of it.