rover

Reading level: hard

Estimated CEFR level: C1 — Advanced

Estimated from word frequency; not an official CEFR classification.

Definition

  1. noun someone who leads a wandering unsettled life
  2. noun an adult member of the Boy Scouts movement

Etymology

From rove (“to roam, wander; (archery) to shoot an arrow randomly”) + -er (suffix forming agent nouns from verbs). Rove is derived from Late Middle English *roven, rove (“to wander”); further etymology uncertain, possibly an English Midlands variant of Northern England raven, rave (“to rove, stray, wander”), possibly from Old Norse ráfa (“to roam, wander”) (although rove and rave are only attested much later), possibly from Proto-Germanic *wabōną, *wabjaną (“to cause to weave; to entangle, wrap”), from Proto-Indo-European *webʰ- (“to braid, weave”).

In classic literature

Synonyms

wanderer, roamer, bird of passage

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