Roam
noun, verb ·Moderate ·College level
Definitions
- 1 The act of roaming; a wander; a travel without aim or destination
"Glass in hand, he set off on a roam of the first floor."
- 1 To wander or travel freely and with no specific destination. intransitive
"Henceforth, wherever thou may’st roam, My blessing, like a line of light, Is on the waters day and night, And like a beacon guards thee home."
- 2 move about aimlessly or without any destination, often in search of food or employment wordnet
- 3 To range or wander over. transitive
"Gangs of thugs roamed the streets."
- 4 To use a network or service from different locations or devices. intransitive
- 5 To transmit (resources) between different locations or devices, to allow comparable usage from any of them. transitive
"At first, it seemed counterintuitive to me to roam settings between computers, but my problem at the time was that every example I was considering was a setting that only made sense for a single computer."
Example
More examples"I like to roam about the fields."
Etymology
From Middle English romen, from Old English rāmian, from Proto-Germanic *raimōną (“to wander”), from *raim- (“to move, raise”), from *h₃reyH- (“to move, lift, flow”). Akin to Old English ārǣman (“to arise, stand up, lift up”), Old High German rāmēn (“to aim”) ( > archaic German rahmen (“to strive”)), Middle Dutch rammen (“to night-wander, to copulate”), rammelen (“to wander about, ramble”). More at ramble.
Related phrases
More for "roam"
Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.