Errance

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. Aimless wandering from place to place without a fixed destination or purpose
2. The act of drifting or roaming about with no settled course, often as a restless journey
3. A rambling, purposeless journey through unfamiliar places, marked by constant movement and no set goal

Etymology: "Errance" is a French noun meaning wandering or roaming, and it has entered English only as a rare, literary borrowing. It comes from the Old French verb "errer", which descends from the Latin "errare", meaning to wander, stray, or go astray. That Latin verb is also the source of English "err", which shows how closely wandering and making mistakes were once linked: to err originally meant to stray off a path, and only later came to mean to make a mistake. The French noun was formed by adding the suffix "-ance" to the verb stem, the same pattern that gives English words like "vigilance" and "resonance". Because "errance" keeps the sense of aimless or itinerant roaming that the Latin verb had, it is most often used in English writing about wandering as a state or a way of life, rather than about mistakes.

Synonyms: wandering, roaming, rambling, errantry