Word of the Day Archive
Saturday April 22, 2006
itinerant \eye-TIN-uhr-uhnt\ , adjective:
1. Passing or traveling from place to place; wandering.
noun:
1. One who travels from place to place.
Like many itinerant vendors in rural places, he was a smooth-talking purveyor of dreams along with tawdry trinkets, and Eliza responded to this romantic wanderer.
-- Ron Chernow, Titan: The Life of John D. Rockefeller
Molds were therefore used only for small amounts of fat, shared with neighbors at cooperative candle dippings or supplied by itinerant candlemakers who went from house to house, helping with the task.
-- Susan Strasser, Waste and Want
Even the itinerant street-vendors cease bustling about and stand still with their mobile stalls, their straps, their samples of merchandise, their mouths wide open and their heads in the air.
-- Dacia Maraini, The Silent Duchess
Their characters are itinerants, voyagers between lands, languages and religions.
-- Maya Jaggi, "A son of the road", The Guardian, November 16, 2002
Itinerant derives from the present participle of Late Latin itinerari, "to make a journey," from Latin iter, itineris, "a going; a walk; a way; a journey." It is related to itinerary, "a route or proposed route of a journey."
Dictionary.com Entry and Pronunciation for itinerant
