just wandering around

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Wander around

To wander around is to move around a place in a casual, aimless manner

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“Wander around.” This is a great phrasal verb to know.

To wander around is to move around a place in a casual, aimless manner. When you wander around, you don’t have a specific direction or purpose. You’re moving at a leisurely pace. You’re not looking at your watch. You’re not on a deadline. You don’t have a planned route.

When you wander around, the goal, the purpose is the movement, the exploration, the discovery; there’s no destination. And the key with “wander around” is that it’s a physical place. You can’t “wander around” a website. If you use “wander around,” you have to refer to a physical place.

When I travel, I often go to cities. And when I get to a new city, I always take some time on the first day to just wander around. I just did this in Oaxaca, a city in the south of Mexico. My flight got there around noon. I settled into my room. And then I wandered around for a few hours.

I walked around leisurely. I let my curiosity be my guide. I didn’t follow a route. I didn’t look at a map. I didn’t have a destination in mind. The whole goal, the whole purpose, was to walk wherever my curiosity took me. That’s “wander around.”

Often in the movies—does this happen in real life? I’m not sure—anyway, in the movies, if someone has a lot on their mind, they often wander around their own city at night. They walk around the streets—not with a destination in mind, but just for the sake of walking. I don’t do that. If I have a lot on my mind and I can’t sleep, I just toss and turn for hours. Maybe I should wander around a little bit to clear my head.

You can wander around inside, too. I like to wander around a bookstore. Bookstores are designed for people to wander around. There are so many sections. There are special displays. There are places to sit. There’s always something to discover. If you like to read, you can wander around the bookstore for a few minutes or a few hours. You go from here to there, you stop, you read a little, you let your eyes scan the shelves, you walk slowly, you go back and check something you saw before. This is wander around.

When I go shopping—if it’s not for books—I’m an in-and-out kind of a shopper. I don’t like to wander around the mall . It stresses me out. I want an objective. I want to go the store I need to go to. I want to get my stuff. And then I want to leave. I don’t like to wander around the mall.

But the mall was built for wandering, it was built for people who do like to wander around. There are lots of corridors. The escalators lead you to new places. There are fountains and food courts and entertainment and special displays. Every store has something different. If you like shopping, you might like to wander around the mall—you might even wander around for a few hours and not buy anything. Not my kind of entertainment, but maybe it’s yours.

You can wander around an office. If you work in a big office, you can walk up and down the corridors, go to different floors, chat with people, network. I just finished the Walter Isaacson biography of Elon Musk. And the book talks about how Musk likes to wander around the Tesla and SpaceX factories, talking to the engineers. He wanders around—he casually goes from place to place, talking to his employees.

Where else can you wander around? You can wander around a museum. If it’s a small museum, I like to go in order, I want a strategy. I’ll go room to room. But sometimes if the museum is really big, I like to wander around…to walk around without a strategy or plan.

You can wander around a park, a playground, or a zoo. I told you about my trip to Oaxaca. I went to the botanic gardens there. Typically, you can wander around the botanic gardens. But this one was different. This was a guided tour. You have to follow the path; you have to follow the tour guide. You’re not allowed to wander around.

See you next time!

And that is all for today’s Plain English. Nice job, you’ve got a new expression, a new phrasal verb to use. And you can practice using it, too, and get direct, personal, human feedback from me if you want to. It’s all at PlainEnglish.com. Right on the page with the transcript of this episode, there’s a practice area. You just write a sentence using “wander around,” and I’ll read it and give you feedback. If you have any questions, you can ask me directly in there, too.

The transcript part is free. The personal feedback on your writing is one of the benefits of Plain English Plus+. Make all your mistakes right there, in the web site, so that when you go out in the real world, you’re equipped, you’re confident, you’re prepared to use “wander around” and the hundreds of other expressions at PlainEnglish.com

That’s all for today. We’ll be back on Thursday with part two of today’s story. See you then.

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Wander or Wonder?

600+ Confusing Words Explained E-Book Let’s learn when to use wander vs. wonder. Should we say “I was wandering” or “I was wondering”?

Wander and wonder are two completely different words, but sometimes English learners confuse them because of their similar spelling and pronunciation.

For more simple and clear lessons about the differences between confusing words in English, get my e-book, 600+ Confusing English Words Explained!  These are words that English learners often ask me about, or often make mistakes with – and when you read this e-book, you can avoid those mistakes and use these words correctly.

Wander: meaning & examples

Wander is a physical activity.

It means to move around (usually walking) without a specific destination or purpose:

• On the first day of my trip, I spent a couple hours wandering around the city.
• We wandered through the park, looking at the flowers.
• I was wandering through the forest, enjoying the fresh air.

We typically wander around or wander through an area.

If you have small children or pets, you want to keep watching them to make sure they don’t  wander off  (meaning move away from you, without a specific definition). Note that it’s always  wander off,  never “wonder off.”

Wonder: Meaning & examples

Wonder is a mental activity.

It means to feel curiosity, to want to know something.

• I wonder what happened to my friend from elementary school? We haven’t been in touch for years.
• Your wife is wondering what time you’ll be home – please give her a call.
• I’m wondering whether the food at that restaurant is any good.

We typically use wonder + a question word or wonder + whether/if for situations that are “yes or no.”:

• I wonder when the supermarket closes. (Example answer: 6PM)
• I wonder if the supermarket is open right now. (Example answer: Yes)
• I’m wondering how he got that job without any experience.
• I’m wondering whether I should look for a new job.

Note: This is the verb form of “wonder.” There is also a noun form, which means “awe or admiration.”

Pronunciation of Wander and Wonder

The WAN of wander is like the WAN of “want.”

The WON of wonder is like the words “won” or “one.”

I hope you feel more confident in how to use wander vs. wonder and wandering vs. wondering!

Clear up your doubts about confusing words… and use English more confidently!

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Shayna Oliveira is the founder of Espresso English, where you can improve your English fast - even if you don’t have much time to study. Millions of students are learning English from her clear, friendly, and practical lessons! Shayna is a CELTA-certified teacher with 10+ years of experience helping English learners become more fluent in her English courses.

How to Use wander in a Sentence

• They wandered down the street.
• He wandered away from the trail and got lost.
• I was just wandering around the house.
• Students were wandering the halls.

Some of these examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'wander.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.

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Wander vs. wonder

| Grammarist

To wander is to move about with no destination or purpose. Wandering is a physical activity, though the word is sometimes used figuratively for nonphysical actions that are aimless (e.g., a movie or a conversation might wander). To wonder is to feel curiosity, to be in doubt, or to have a feeling of admiration. The verb also bears the less commonly used sense to have a feeling of awe —e.g. , she wondered at the beautiful scene outside the window . In either sense, wondering is a mental activity.

The words have separate origins in Old English.  Wonder  comes from  wunder , a noun for a marvel or a wondrous thing. 1 Wander  comes from  wandrian , meaning  to move aimlessly . 1 They took their modern forms by the 16th century (both words appear in Shakespeare), and they have remained more or less unchanged through the centuries.

Yet many inside and outside the force wonder whether the pileup of scandals and his increasingly authoritarian use of power have diminished his once-towering stature. [ New York Times ] I have a deep-seated need for love but I don’t often wander around Tesco looking for it. [ Guardian ] For years I’ve wondered what goes on behind the doors of a Buddhist temple. [ National Post ] At the worst of it, he found himself wandering in a park alone, mumbling to himself. [ Stuff.co.nz ]

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• Cambridge Dictionary +Plus

Meaning of wandering in English

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wander verb ( MOVE AROUND )

• walk The baby has just learned to walk.
• stride She strode purposefully up to the desk and demanded to speak to the manager.
• march He marched right in to the office and demanded to see the governor.
• stroll We strolled along the beach.
• wander She wandered from room to room, not sure of what she was looking for.
• amble She ambled down the street, looking in shop windows.
• crawl There'd been a bad accident on the motorway and traffic was crawling.
• trundle Lorries trundle through the narrow lanes.
• creep He crept downstairs, hardly making any noise.
• trudge They trudged wearily through the snow.
• stroll We spent the afternoon strolling around Budapest.
• amble He ambled over to the window.
• Don't worry if you lose hold of the reins - the horse won't wander off.
• He wandered around, clearing up in a desultory way.
• We wandered along the shore , stepping over the flotsam that had washed up in the night .
• We wandered through the beautifully proportioned rooms of the Winter Palace.
• She was wandering around in a daze this morning .
• His eyes wandered over the posters adorning the walls .
• dumbwalking

You can also find related words, phrases, and synonyms in the topics:

wander verb ( SUBJECT )

• bury the lede idiom
• candy coating
• candy-coated
• circumlocution
• circumlocutory
• get on to/onto something
• gloss over something
• go off on a tangent idiom
• prevaricate
• tiptoe around something/someone
• unexpressed

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Wedge Island's 'Gilligan' living dream life in SA, with rare marsupials, penguins and eagles for company

There's no millionaire and his wife, nor shipwrecked crew. There might have been a movie star, but there's definitely a little bit of Gilligan and some skippers, too, on Wedge Island, South Australia.

While semi-retired Ron O'Brien isn't marooned on Wedge Island at the bottom of Spencer Gulf, he's earnt the nickname Gilligan after the 1960s series Gilligan's Island for spending a lot of time isolated on the island.

There are six homes so far on the 10-square-kilometre island but for most of the year he's the only person living on the island among the bettongs and wallabies.

Surviving for him is a lot easier than for the television series Gilligan's Island characters, but it still takes a bit of the professor's ingenuity to get by.

Ron has been going to Wedge Island for the past 12 years, living there semi-permanently since about 2019.

He built a house on the island, transporting everything by boat and a small barge that he also built.

There's no boat ramp or working jetty so Ron has to land on the sandy beach with the southern ocean swells and the beach sometimes washed away.

It isn't easy — but for Ron, it's paradise.

"I think it dates back to when I was a child. I used to come home from school and watch Gilligan's Island," Ron said.

"I used to think, 'Wow, what a great lifestyle.'"

Growing up, he spent much of his childhood surfing at Phillip Island in Victoria.

He became an "islander" after moving to Kangaroo Island in South Australia in about 1980, initially living in a tent, then building a house and raising a family.

"It was the sort of lifestyle I'd always been longing for," Ron said.

Island escape beckons 

"I was surfing every day. It was great, but over time, more and more people came and it slowly got overrun by people — that's what usually happens."

He returned to making a living in Melbourne before he felt the draw of an island lifestyle again.

"I wanted to go back to Kangaroo Island, of course, but, nah, it's way too expensive, far too many people," Ron said.

He looked more remotely and bought his block of land, site unseen, on Wedge Island in 2008.

Ron didn't even have a boat to reach his new paradise, let alone a boat licence.

"When I first got here, I thought, 'Great, there's no one here'. It's the main attraction," Ron said.

"It's just the serenity of it all, and the beaches are beautiful."

He's now become almost the unofficial caretaker.

There's an old homestead built of local stone, a shearing shed, and old horse buggies are windows to the island's agricultural past.

Half the island was made a national park in 1987 when three subdivisions were approved to provide 114 allotments.

The national park side features high cliffs, so it's inaccessible from the sea.

The rest of the island is privately owned so it is off limits to the public, with the block owners helping care for its wilderness.

Some of the landowners had bought their land to keep it undeveloped but Ron is worried there could be a lot more houses one day.

"If everybody who owned a block said, 'let's go out and build a house on Wedge', well you couldn't do it," he said.

"The island couldn't sustain such a thing and it would be a shame for the island."

Development unsustainable

He admits it's hypocritical because he's one of the lucky ones to have built a home there.

But his idyllic lifestyle is protected by the logistics and cost of just getting to the island, let alone bringing building materials and equipment.

Everything needs to come by sea, although one block owner has used a helicopter to bring materials over from the mainland.

Ron brought his building materials, including the 2.1-metre poles, to the island using his small boat.

"It was just a case of 'It's a nice day, let's take some poles over'," Ron said.

He averages three hours to the island, leaving from Yorke Peninsula in South Australia.

"Fully loaded, we could take four or five hours," Ron said.

His longest trip was six and a half hours bringing over his small 4WD on the barge.

"People thought it was pretty funny [seeing the car on the barge] when I was launching from Marion Bay."

Ron said the key to island life was improvising and figuring out how to build and fix things yourself.

He has internet and communications installed, so he says it's easy to access that information, and marvels at how the early pioneers farmed on Wedge.

"They didn't have the machinery, they didn't have the boats we have," Ron said.

"I just take my hat off to those guys."

Minimal footprint

He tries to limit his footprint on the island — he has a composting toilet, solar panels and a pole house.

"I always try and make sure I walk below the high tide water mark so my footprints disappear because it's one of the only beaches I know of you can walk along and not see another footprint," Ron said.

There may be penguin tracks, seagulls and hooded plover marks, but no signs of people.

"You get the sensation you could have been the first person getting off the boat. To me, that's special," Ron said.

He sometimes has his partner come and stay, but for the most part, it's just him and a band of wallabies, wombats and bettongs rustling around the island.

Life lesson

It takes visitors a few days to unwind and relax when they come to stay, but they soon tune into Ron's way.

"I say, 'Just calm down, relax, just sit down,'" he said.

Ron's happy wandering about on his island, enjoying the birds and animals in peace and quiet.

He can see the similarities with Gilligan's Island, but he's not looking to be "rescued" anytime soon.

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Order of Lenin Moscow Air Defence District

Ордена Ленина Московский округ ПВО

Military Unit: 64178

Commanders:

• Marshal of the Soviet Union Kirill Semenovich Moskalenko, 1948 - 1953
• Colonel-General Nikolay Nikiforovich Nagornyy, 1953 - 1954
• Marshal of the Soviet Union Pavel Fedorovich Batitskiy, 1954 - 7.66
• Colonel-General Vasiliy Vasilevich Okunev, 7.66 - 8.70
• Marshal of Aviation Aleksandr Ivanovich Koldunov, 8.70 - 1975
• Colonel-General Boris Viktorovich Bochkov, 1975 - 1980
• Marshal of Aviation Anatoliy Ustinovich Konstantinov, 1980 - 1987
• Colonel-General Vladimir Georgievich Tsarkov, 1987 - 1989
• General of the Army Viktor Alekseevich Prudnikov, 1989 - 8.91
• General of the Army Anatoliy Mikhaylovich Kornukov, 8.91 - 1998
• Colonel-General G.B. Vasilev, 1998 - 2002
• Colonel-General Yuriy V. Solovev, from 2002

Activated 1948 in Moscow, Moscow Oblast, as the Moscow Air Defence Region , from the North-Western Air Defence District.

1950 renamed Moscow Air Defence District .

Organisation 1955:

• 37th Fighter Aviation Corps PVO (Morsansk, Tambov Oblast)
• 56th Fighter Aviation Corps PVO (Yaroslavl, Yaroslavl Oblast)
• 78th Guards Fighter Aviation Corps PVO (Bryansk, Bryansk Oblast)
• 88th Fighter Aviation Corps PVO (Rzhev, Kalinin Oblast)
• 151st Guards Fighter Aviation Division PVO (Klin, Moscow Oblast)
• 38th independent Reconnaissance Aviation Squadron (Rzhev, Kalinin Oblast)
• 182nd independent Reconnaissance Aviation Squadron
• 90th independent Transport Aviation Squadron (Stupino, Moscow Oblast)
• 1st Guards Anti-Aircraft Artillery Division (Maryino-Znamenskoye, Moscow Oblast)
• 52nd Anti-Aircraft Artillery Division (Biryulevo, Moscow Oblast)
• 74th Anti-Aircraft Artillery Division (Mytishchi, Moscow Oblast)
• 76th Anti-Aircraft Artillery Division (Skolkovo, Moscow Oblast)
• 78th Anti-Aircraft Artillery Division (Gorkiy, Gorkiy Oblast)
• 80th Anti-Aircraft Artillery Division (Moscow (Lenin Hills), Moscow Oblast)
• 96th Anti-Aircraft Artillery Division (Panki, Moscow Oblast)
• 48th Anti-Aircraft Artillery Regiment (Yaroslavl, Yaroslavl Oblast)
• 80th Guards Anti-Aircraft Artillery Regiment (Tula, Tula Oblast)
• 108th Anti-Aircraft Artillery Regiment (Voronezh, Voronezh Oblast)
• 387th Anti-Aircraft Artillery Regiment (Sarov, Gorkiy Oblast)
• 389th Anti-Aircraft Artillery Regiment (Bezhitsa, Bryansk Oblast)
• 393th Guards Anti-Aircraft Artillery Regiment (Elektrostal, Moscow Oblast)
• 532nd Anti-Aircraft Artillery Regiment (Smolensk, Smolensk Oblast)
• 1225th Anti-Aircraft Artillery Regiment (Gorkiy, Gorkiy Oblast)
• 1287th Anti-Aircraft Artillery Regiment (Shcherbaki, Kalinin Oblast)
• 92nd independent Regiment for Radar Countermeasures (Moscow, Moscow Oblast)

Organisation 1962:

• 118th Communications Center (Moscow, Moscow Oblast)
• 6th independent Radio-Technical Regiment (Klin, Moscow Oblast)
• 436th independent Transport Aviation Regiment (Stupino, Moscow Oblast)
• 103rd independent Communications and Radio-Technical Support Company (Stupino, Moscow Oblast)
• 2367th independent Radio-Relay Battalion (Nemchinovka, Moscow Oblast)
• 52nd independent Airfield Engineer Battalion (Kosterevo, Moscow Oblast)
• 1470th independent Engineer Battalion (Elektrostal, Moscow Oblast)
• 193rd independent Transport Battalion (Moscow, Moscow Oblast)
• 1st Air Defence Army for Special Use (Balashikha, Moscow Oblast)
• 2nd Air Defence Corps (Rzhev, Rzhev Oblast)
• 3rd Air Defence Corps (Yaroslavl, Yaroslavl Oblast)
• 7th Air Defence Corps (Bryansk, Bryansk Oblast)
• 18th Air Defence Division (Gorkiy, Gorkiy Oblast)

Awarded the Order of Lenin 22.6.68.

Organisation 1970:

• 16th Air Defence Corps (Gorkiy, Gorkiy Oblast)

Organisation 1980:

• 712th Data Center (Moscow, Moscow Oblast)

Organisation 1988:

1998 renamed Moscow Air Force and Air Defence District.

2002 renamed Special Purpose Troop Command.

• Moscow, Moscow Oblast, 1948 - today [55 45 59N, 37 38 22E]

Subordination:

• GK PVO, 1948 - 7.98
• GK VVS and PVO, 7.98 - today