vagabond
pronunciation
How to pronounce vagabond in British English:
UK [ˈvægəbɒnd]
How to pronounce vagabond in American English:
US [ˈvægəbɑnd]
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- Noun:
- anything that resembles a vagabond in having no fixed place
- a wanderer who has no established residence or visible means of support
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- Verb:
- move about aimlessly or without any destination, often in search of food or employment
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- Adjective:
- wandering aimlessly without ties to a place or community
- continually changing especially as from one abode or occupation to another
Word Origin
- vagabond
- vagabond: [15] A vagabond is etymologically a ‘wanderer’. The word comes via Old French vagabond from Latin vagābundus, which was derived from vagārī ‘wander’ (source also of English termagant, vagary [16], and vagrant [15]). And vagārī in turn was based on vagus ‘wandering, undecided’ (source also of English vague [16]).=> termagant, vagary, vagrant, vague
- vagabond (adj.)
- early 15c. (earlier vacabond, c. 1400), from Old French vagabond, vacabond "wandering, unsteady" (14c.), from Late Latin vagabundus "wandering, strolling about," from Latin vagari "wander" (from vagus "wandering, undecided;" see vague) + gerundive suffix -bundus.
- vagabond (n.)
- c. 1400, earlier wagabund (in a criminal indictment from 1311); see vagabond (adj.). Despite the earliest use, in Middle English often merely "one who is without a settled home, a vagrant" but not necessarily in a bad sense. Notion of "idle, disreputable person" predominated from 17c.
Example
- 1. Until I was 30 I was a vagabond .
- 2. In middle age something tragic happened to him : he went bankrupt and became a vagabond .
- 3. From that time onwards he continued his life as a vagabond mainly as what he himself calls a ' soldier of fortune ' .
- 4. Mr. bale plays john miller , a disreputable american vagabond who happens to be a mortician ; as the film begins he is making his way through the fighting toward the church , where he is to be paid to conduct a burial .