roving

¹

[roh-ving]

adjective

1. roaming or wandering.

2. not assigned or restricted to any particular location, area, topic, etc..

   a roving editor.

3. not assigned to any particular diplomatic post but having a special mission.

   a roving ambassador.

roving

²

[roh-ving]

noun

1. a soft strand of fiber that has been twisted, attenuated, and freed of foreign matter preparatory to its conversion into yarn.

2. the final phase of carding, in which this is done.

Other Word Forms

• rovingly adverb
• rovingness noun

Word History and Origins

Origin of roving¹

First recorded in 1590–1600; rove ¹ + -ing ²

Origin of roving²

First recorded in 1785–95; rove ³ + -ing ¹

Example Sentences

She teaches herself to shoot and hunt, and even to cope with roving polar bears.

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It’s unclear exactly how he was injured, but his lawyers say that Rovidio Marin had been at the car wash on Aug. 27, when immigration agents doing a “roving patrol” stormed in and raided it.

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In September, the Supreme Court temporarily lifted a lower-court order that had barred immigration agents in Los Angeles from “roving” patrols.

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“Of course not. The FCC does not have a roving mandate to police speech in the name of the ‘public interest.’”

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After suffering through a harrowing summer, L.A. was finally able to relax a bit when a judge blocked ICE’s method of “roving raids” all over the city.

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Related Words

• itinerant 
• peripatetic 
• wandering