Roving
adj, noun, verb ·Common ·High school level
Definitions
- 1 A long and narrow bundle of fibre, usually used to spin woollen yarn or in felting. countable, uncountable
- 2 travelling about without any clear destination wordnet
- 3 The process of giving the first twist to yarn. countable, uncountable
- 1 present participle and gerund of rove form-of, gerund, participle, present
- 1 Moving about; having no fixed or permanent abode; travelling from place to place.
"The Northern Territory was dear to us both, and the fever for a roving life had not yet worn off, but some time elapsed before we could quite make up our minds whether to try our fortunes in Port Darwin again or not."
- 2 Of the eyes or gaze, inspecting all over; not staying fixed on one subject.
"His roving eyes never focused on anything specific."
- 1 migratory wordnet
Example
More examples""Jack, whenever there is no good video to watch, no good movie to see in the theatre, or no good book or magazine to read, I opt for Imaginary Visualization. I invent a setting in my mind and stay there for a while." "Sam, can you give me an example?" "It might be a calming teahouse in orbit around a roving gas giant planet, or something totally different.""
Etymology
From rove + -ing
From rove (“sliver of wool or cotton”), late 17th century, possibly from obsolete Middle English rove(n) (“to draw out, pull off”), itself a dialectal variant of rive (“to tear, split”).
See the etymology of the corresponding lemma form.
Related phrases
More for "roving"
Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.