Definitions
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
- v. To talk incoherently or aimlessly.
- v. To move or act aimlessly or vaguely; wander.
Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia
- n. A beggar.
- To beg.
- To speak with a beggar's whine; grumble.
- To mutter; talk incoherently or idly; wander in talking like a drunken or foolish person; drivel.
Wiktionary
- v. To speak in a disorganized or desultory manner; to babble or prattle.
- v. To wander or walk aimlessly.
GNU Webster's 1913
- v. To utter in a grumbling manner; to mutter.
- n. A beggar.
WordNet 3.0
- v. wander aimlessly
- v. speak (about unimportant matters) rapidly and incessantly
- v. talk indistinctly; usually in a low voice
Etymologies
- Probably dialectal variant of meander (probably influenced by wander).
Examples
“I looked up "maunder" and I think it would make an excellent stage name: -) 9: 28 PM skookumchick said ...”
“maunder' on with objections long since disposed of.”
“He had seen convicts, after the guards had manhandled them, crippled in body for life, or left to maunder in mind to the end of their days.”
“And while you maunder about restoring competition, the trusts go on destroying you.”
“Tromp would maunder over and over of how Johannes Maartens and the cunies robbed the kings on Tabong Mountain, each embalmed in his golden coffin with an embalmed maid on either side; and of how these ancient proud ones crumbled to dust within the hour while the cunies cursed and sweated at junking the coffins.”
“His columns frequently wander and maunder, heading this way and that, but never actually arriving anywhere.”
“At any rate, I found it resonated a lot for me, especially regarding the struggles for balance that I go through with my writing life and how it fits into the rest of my life (something I maunder about here on occasion), and what writing and publishing (not the same thing) does or serves for me, and as ever with Matt it's well written and thus worth a look.”
“Get on board or maunder out to the retirement home, Fred!”
25 Random Tips for the Busy Facebook User - The Lede Blog - NYTimes.com
“Chiang Stumps Even Her Teacher, the reporter for The Christian Science Monitor listed indehiscence (a botanical term for the state of being closed at maturity), maunder (to move slowly and uncertainly), and cenote (a sinkhole) among a list of eight difficult words she had used, saying that even Wellesley professors had to consult their dictionaries.”
“And thanks to the rest of you, too, both those who pitched in to help make it a real book, and those who have listened to me maunder about it since early 2003.”
Lists
These user-created lists contain the word ‘maunder’.
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Words
phantasmagoria, eviscerate, avast, simulacrum, varicose, oblique, gestalt, ersatz, vernal, vivace, stellate, synecdoche and 314 more...
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Logolepsy
"Luciferous Logolepsy is a collection of over 9,000 obscure English words. Though the definition of an 'English' word might seem to be straightforward, it is not. There exist so many adopted, deriv...
Anschauung, Areopagus, Argus, Briarean, Dei gratia, Dei judicium, Deo volente, Duecento, Foehn, Geflugelte Worte, Gegenschein, Hakenkreuz and 9230 more...
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Words of Interest
Noelle Knight I had a lot of time to maunder on and on through similar dead-end thought patterns, since Bill was having a rip-roaring good time at the party. -Charlaine Harris, Living Dead in Dallas Dec 10, 2010