What’s in a word? Always more than I expect. Today as I was writing I got hung up on the word “wanderer.”
Should I use the German version? I wondered. When I looked into it, I realized the German word and the English words are exactly the same.
So I initiated a search for alternate German words for wanderer: roamer, vagabond, which elicited Wandervogel.
Okay, Wandervogel. Promising. Via my studies of the German language, I’m pretty sure the literal translation would be “wandering bird.” Simple enough. But the next place I look, at the on-line translation.babylon.com/german, it gets more involved: Wandervogel: “n. bird of passage, wandering bird, rolling stone, vagabond, one who does not settle in one place, temporary tenant, temporary resident.”
Cool word, I’m thinking. Lots of subtleties here–maybe a good word to use for an immigrant who keeps returning to his homeland, migrating back and forth, driven by a natural urge.
Just as I’m about to topple off the fence on the side of a hearty “Yes!” Wandervogel is just the word I’m looking for!”, I make a last Google search, which pulls up, naturally enough, Wikipedia, an entry about German nationalist youth groups. A heap of twentieth century baggage I’m not willing to unload off the truck.
Thirty minutes later, I’m back where I started. For now, I’ll stick with wanderer.
One response to “What’s in a word?”