Usually meanders. turnings or windings; a winding path or course.
a circuitous movement or journey.
an intricate variety of fret or fretwork.
to follow a winding course
to wander without definite aim or direction
(often plural) a curve or bend, as in a river
(often plural) a winding course or movement
an ornamental pattern, esp as used in ancient Greek architecture
1570–80; < Latin maeander < Greek maíandros a winding, special use of Maíandros, the Menderes River, noted for its winding course
To meander means to wander aimlessly on a winding roundabout course. If you want some time to yourself after school, you might meander home, taking the time to window shop and look around. Meander comes from a river in modern-day Turkey, the Maiandros, which winds and wanders on its course. Today, a stream or a path meanders, as does a person who walks somewhere in a roundabout fashion. If your speech meanders, you don't keep to the point. It's hard to understand what your teacher is trying to impart if he keeps meandering off with anecdotes and digressions. Pronounce meander with three syllables not two — me-AN-der.
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Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
Seeing the new meander on the farmland is a big moment, he said, adding "it's nice to give something back".
From BBC ● Jul. 1, 2026
"Especially species that rely on more natural gravels and variation within the channel - that's the benefit of the meander."
From BBC ● Jul. 1, 2026
There are less rules outside, fewer boundaries: coffee dates prolong, walks meander, thoughts digress.
From Los Angeles Times ● Mar. 13, 2026
From a certain point of view, it makes sense to concentrate the art into discrete thematic galleries, and to treat the space between them as flowing interstitial fluid through which the visitor can meander happily.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Oct. 29, 2025
A silver thread of river bisected the field and there, nestling in the fold of a meander loop, was the proud oak.
From "Artemis Fowl" by Eoin Colfer
That reminds me of Jane Alison's "Meander, Spiral, Explode," where she shows how the traditional pyramid structure plot is not the only way to tell a story.
From Salon ● Apr. 13, 2023
LB Montrel Meander was carted off in the third quarter with an ankle injury.
From Fox News ● Aug. 22, 2021
He claimed Montrel Meander off waivers from Oakland on Wednesday.
From Seattle Times ● Jun. 13, 2019
Meander to the counter and order one of its famed baked stroopwafels.
From Washington Post ● Sep. 20, 2018
About midway between Meander and Comanche, Agnes Horton was located on the land which Smith had selected for her.
From Claim Number One by Ogden, George W. (George Washington)
“Land” regains traction when it returns to Ireland and to its mythic theme, which meanders from the Neolithic era to the 20th century, with detours to more fantastical regions.
From The Wall Street Journal ● May 29, 2026
But it also meanders quite a lot, and is somewhere between a self-help book and a stream of anecdotes.
From BBC ● Jan. 30, 2025
Nearby Antonovich Trail, a popular trek for locals, meanders along a babbling Walnut Creek, shaded by fig, coast live oak and eucalyptus trees.
From Los Angeles Times ● Aug. 22, 2024
The stages of grief are all endlessly explored, and it loses us as it meanders through some of the low parts of "The Tortured Poets Department."
From Salon ● Apr. 19, 2024
The top half of Virginia is bisected by the Rappahannock River, which meanders from the Blue Ridge Mountains in the north and empties into Chesapeake Bay.
From "Blink" by Malcolm Gladwell
Hawking could intuit the mathematics that describes the fabric of spacetime, but in that earlier book he sometimes forgot that the rest of us could not do the same, and meandered into distracting mathematical discussions.
From The Wall Street Journal ● May 19, 2026
He was a keen student of dialect; doing movies in the South, he meandered down backroads, learning just the right way to frame a question in rural Mississippi or deliver a compliment in west Texas.
From Los Angeles Times ● Feb. 16, 2026
The England duo smartly meandered along, taking 106 runs in the session compared to the rampant flow of runs earlier.
From BBC ● Jul. 4, 2025
As the Test meandered on a sunny Friday afternoon in Nottingham, Bashir's bashed finger meant Stokes had to spring into action.
From BBC ● May 23, 2025
Obviously a mixture of symbolic and character-based language, the text meandered around the page in no apparent order.
From "Artemis Fowl" by Eoin Colfer
"Kank lived in a landscape of meandering rivers and streams with seasonal ponds, inhabited by aquatic plants such as water lilies and animals including fish, insects, and various molluscs," says Dr. Motta.
From Science Daily ● May 29, 2026
There's a lot of flakiness in their make-up, possibly too many players spending too much time meandering through games.
From BBC ● Apr. 27, 2026
His lines are lazy, woozy, all-forgiving reportage about the seasons’ slow parade, the meandering ongoingness of our world: arrival, decay and the modest glory in between.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Apr. 16, 2026
Since then, the 79-year-old Republican has rarely missed an opportunity to discuss the project, frequently meandering in mid-speech on other topics to riff about the architectural details of the proposed facility.
From Barron's ● Mar. 31, 2026
Shin had noticed that his meandering question-and-answer sessions were putting people to sleep.
From "Escape from Camp 14: One Man's Remarkable Odyssey from North Korea to Freedom in the West" by Blaine Harden
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
