Word of the Day Archive
Monday October 18, 2004
maunder \MON-duhr\
, intransitive verb:
1. To talk incoherently; to speak in a rambling manner.
2. To wander aimlessly or confusedly.
As in one of his earlier novels , . . . Kerr invents a credibly grim scenario for our future: most of the earth's inhabitants are infected with a deadly virus and maunder in fetid cities.
-- Charles Flowers, "Blood on the Moon (Really!)", New York Times, February 14, 1999
It is a play with melodramatic themes, but García Lorca has put aside temptation to let it maunder, scream or otherwise let the emotions take over.
-- Richard F. Shepard, "Stage: 'Bernarda Alba' Produced in Spanish", New York Times, November 23, 1979
Now I find myself maundering about parts of plays hardly anybody knows or cares about anymore, such as the graveyard scene in Our Town, or the poker game in Tennessee Williams's A Streetcar Named Desire, or what Willy Loman's wife said after that tragically ordinary clumsily gallant American committed suicide in Arthur Miller's Death of a Salesman.
-- Kurth Vonnegut, Timequake
Maunder is perhaps a dialectal variant of meander (possibly influenced by wander).
Dictionary.com Entry and Pronunciation for maunder
