Nomads

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. A community of people who travel continually to secure resources and shelter, often lacking a fixed dwelling
2. Groups of individuals characterized by their transient lifestyle, frequently relocating in search of sustenance
3. People who do not settle in one location and instead move from place to place to find food, water, or grazing land

Etymology: The Greek word "nomos" meant "pasture," and the Greeks built "nomas" from it to describe people who roamed in search of pasture for their animals. Under that sense, a "nomas" was a herder, not a restless wanderer, so the modern idea of a person with no fixed home is a later shift in meaning from the pastoral original. The Romans borrowed the Greek form as "Nomas," used for the wandering shepherds of Africa and the Near East, and the word passed into Middle French as "nomade" before reaching English. Its ancestry also reaches back to a verb meaning "to distribute" or "to pasture," which is why the pastoral sense sits so close to the root. "Nomads" is simply the plural of "nomad," so it names several such groups at once. Compare it with "Numidia," the Roman name of North African territory, which is related through the same Greek root.

Synonyms: wanderers, travellers, roamers, migrants, vagrants

Antonyms: settlers, inhabitants, residents, dwellers, natives