Don't know much about Geography

With all this time on my hands, I spend a lot of time meandering through dictionaries, thesauri, and encyclopedias. Or IKEA; that's a nice place to meander too...

So, we all know what "meander" means, but where did the word come from?  If you guess, like I did, that it comes from "ME AND hER," we couldn't be more wrong. Here's what I found, if you're still here (and haven't meandered off someplace...)


Speakers of English have used the word "meander" since 1599.  As we often did, we stole it from Latin, where they had a word "maeander"  that THEY had taken from Greeks, who used the word "maiandros".  And if you look at a map of the Mississippi River, you see that it meanders quite a bit, but always arrives at its destination.

And the Greeks got "meander" from the river Maiandros (now Menderes), a river in Asia Minor, which is now called Asian Turkey, or Turkey, or Tofu if you're vegan. That river takes many a twist and turn, so that's why we call it meandering when we stop at Dollar Tree on the way home to look for that perfect gift.

They call the Maiandros the "Meander" River now, and it's located south of Izmir, east of Milet.  As you see on the map, it takes the long, roundabout scenic route through Turkey on the way to Greece.

And really, wouldn't you?