wayfaring

English

Alternative forms

• waifaring (obsolete)

Etymology 1

From Middle English wayferande, weyverinde, wayverinde, from Old English weġfarende, weġfērende (“wayfaring”), equivalent to way +‎ faring. Cognate with Icelandic vegfarandi. More at wayfare.

Adjective

wayfaring (not comparable)

1. Travelling, especially on foot.
   • 1842, [Katherine] Thomson, chapter I, in Widows and Widowers. A Romance of Real Life., volume I, London: Richard Bentley, […], →OCLC, pages 4–5:

     If a traveller, emancipating himself slowly from the endless suburbs, and smoke, and din of dirty Wolstanstone (corrupted into Wolstone), a manufacturing town not in the South of England, proceed westward, he enters into a region of peace and rural beauty, refreshing as the vision of Beatrice was to Dante, the glimpse of earth to Satan, the thoughts of home to them who know that their lot is to perish in the wave. The village of Northington, which the wayfaring man from Wolstone may be thought thus to hail, reflects, nevertheless, the wealth of its great and smoky neighbour.

2. Peripatetic.

Derived terms

• wayfaring-tree

 

Noun

wayfaring (countable and uncountable, plural wayfarings)

1. Travel, especially on foot.

Etymology 2

Verb

wayfaring

1. present participle and gerund of wayfare