Roved

Part of speech: verb

Definitions

1. Moved around freely or wandered without a specific destination
2. Traveled without a fixed course, exploring or wandering casually
3. Went from place to place in an unsettled or exploratory way

Etymology: "Roved" is simply the past tense and past participle of "rove," so its story is really the story of "rove." That verb probably came into English as a Midlands variant of a Northern Middle English word, "raven," meaning "to wander," which was itself borrowed from Old Norse "ráfa," meaning "to rove or stray about." The Norse root survives in modern Icelandic "ráfa," still meaning "to wander," and in the Scots "rave," which carries the same sense of roaming without a fixed course. The sense has stayed remarkably steady across centuries. A Viking-age word for aimless wandering passed through northern English dialects and came south as a verb that still describes exactly that movement: roaming with no particular destination in mind.

Synonyms: wandered, roamed, drifted, meandered, explored

Antonyms: settled, stayed, remained, fixed, halted