Other forms: roaming, roamed, roams
To roam is to travel about freely over a wide area. Roam the hills, free to roam, roaming charges.
It suggests wandering without a fixed route rather than being lost. Free to roam is used of animals and, on egg boxes, of hens. In Britain, the right to roam is the legal right of access to open country. On a phone, roaming is using another network abroad, and roaming charges is what everybody remembers about it. Note roam and Rome, which sound similar and are entirely unrelated.
1verbroamTo travel about freely over a wide area.
“Wild horses roam freely across the open moorland.”
roam is a wandering.
Middle English romen is of uncertain origin. The old story that it comes from pilgrims going to Rome is charming and almost certainly false — the word appears before the pilgrimage sense could have produced it.
Proto-Germanic
*raimōną — to wander
Old English
rāmian
Middle English
romen
English, today
roam
Built from
From Middle English romen, from Old English rāmian, from Proto-Germanic raimōną (“to wander”), from raim- (“to move, raise”), from h₃reyH- (“to move, lift, flow”). Akin to Old English ārǣman (“to arise, stand up, lift up”), Old High German rāmēn (“to aim”) (> archaic German rahmen (“to strive”)), Middle Dutch rammen (“to night-wander, to copulate”), rammelen (“to wander about, ramble”). More at ramble.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA
Practised in Ways of Moving