ROVING • DICCIONARIO INGLES.COM • Definition of Roving

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/rˈoʊvɪŋ/ Listen

verb

Rove v. t.

1.

To draw through an eye or aperture.

2.

To draw out into flakes; to card, as wool.

3.

To twist slightly; to bring together, as slivers of wool or cotton, and twist slightly before spinning.

Rove v. t.

1.

To wander over or through. "Roving the field, I chanced A goodly tree far distant to behold."

2.

To plow into ridges by turning the earth of two furrows together.

Rove v. i. (past & past part. roved; pres. part. roving)

1.

To practice robbery on the seas; to wander about on the seas in piracy. (Obs.)

2.

Hence, to wander; to ramble; to rauge; to go, move, or pass without certain direction in any manner, by sailing, walking, riding, flying, or otherwise. "For who has power to walk has power to rove."

3.

(Archery) To shoot at rovers; hence, to shoot at an angle of elevation, not at point-blank (rovers usually being beyond the point-blank range). "Fair Venus' son, that with thy cruel dart At that good knight so cunningly didst rove."

Synonyms: To wander; roam; range; ramble stroll.

noun

Roving n.

1.

The operatin of forming the rove, or slightly twisted sliver or roll of wool or cotton, by means of a machine for the purpose, called a roving frame, or roving machine.

2.

A roll or sliver of wool or cotton drawn out and slightly twisted; a rove. See 2d Rove, 2.

Roving frame, Roving machine, a machine for drawing and twisting roves and twisting roves and winding them on bobbin for the spinning machine.

Roving n. The act of one who roves or wanders.

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Etymology of 'Roving'

Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48

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"Roving" Quotes from Famous Books

... spend, he gave himself over into the hands of grasping railroad and steamship companies, or their agencies, and became for a time the slave of guide and dragoman and carrier. And then the wanderlust, descended to him from the blood of his roving Dutch ancestors, which had lain dormant in the several generations following, sprang into active life again. He became known in every port of call. He became known also in the wildernesses. He had climbed almost ...

— The Place of Honeymoons • Harold MacGrath

... He swung about and glared defiantly at his pursuers out of injected eyes. He had never seen a lasso before, possibly not a man; but his instinct told him that the horse and rider behind him were not roving the plain in his own aimless fashion. He stood pawing the ground and shaking his great red nostrils. Suddenly to his surprise the part of the horse new to him lifted itself, and a black coiling something, graceful ...

— The Valiant Runaways • Gertrude Atherton

... and in a few minutes more she had a mass of the soft, shining, gray, feathery leaves in her hands, and was urging the horses fiercely on their way back. "This'll cure her, ef ennything will," she said, as she entered the room again; but her heart sank as she saw Ramona's eyes roving restlessly over Felipe's face, no sign of recognition in them. "She's bad," she said, her lips trembling; "but, 'never say die!' ez allers our motto; 'tain't never tew late fur ennything but oncet, 'n' yer can't tell when thet time's come ...

— Ramona • Helen Hunt Jackson

... religion and the overlordship of the universe. I am sure Mars, Mercury, and Tellus are equally prone to this weakness. One day—in the uncountably many of solar mornings—there is a collision, a breaking up of all the old forms through contact with some mysterious roving mass of burning matter. The planets with their kings and prophets disappear in fire and gas, The perturbation in the vast Cosmos of Change is probably not greater than that caused by the fall of an old and rotten tree before the cleansing ...

— Mountain Meditations - and some subjects of the day and the war • L. Lind-af-Hageby

... original stem; and to both was pronounced a corresponding doom—a sentence which argued in both a principle of duration and self-propagation, that is memorable in any race. The children of Ishmael are the Arabs of the desert. Their destiny as a roving robber nation, and liable to all men's hands, as they indifferently levied spoil on all, was early pronounced. And here, again, we see at once how it will be evaded: it is the desert, it is the climate, it is the solemnity of that ...

— The Posthumous Works of Thomas De Quincey, Vol. 1 (2 vols) • Thomas De Quincey

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