Word.ws English Dictionary

vagarist

vagarist noun: one whose thought wanders in many directions.

Noun

vagarist (plural vagarists)

  1. One whose thought wanders in many directions.
    • The men who call themselves philosophers, may look with pride upon their speculations; but true philosophy is nothing more than the art of being happy; and a woman contented to cull the flowers of the moment, in the modest vale of female enjoyments, has more true philosophy than the vagarist, who...1823, The Angel of Mercy: A Little Book of Affection, page 82
    • In journeying through the fine land of memory one is apt to become a most unconscionable vagarist, for that curious faculty of the mind, which often seems dead but only slumbers, when once set in motion travels far and refuses to recall one scene or incident without recalling also a hundred others...1893, John W. Greene, Camp Ford Prison, and how I Escaped, page 7

Examples of vagarist in a sentence

  • It seemed to be the wild fancy of a vagarist or dreamer.1899, Arthur T. Pierson -, The Miracles of Missions, page 51:
  • This frame of mind is not common and perhaps not desirable and thence have the opinions popularly obtained that he is an unsubstantial, sentimental vagarist and mystic.1975, Benjamin Browne Foster, Down East Diary, page 210:
  • Greene believed that an old soldier became a "most unconscionable vagarist" whenever he tried to remember anything.1997, Earl J. Hess, The Union Soldier in Battle: Enduring the Ordeal of Combat, page 183:

Forms of vagarist

pluralvagarists

Origin of vagarist

From Latin vagus (“wandering”) + -ist. By surface analysis, Latin vag(us) + -arist.

Questions about vagarist

What does vagarist mean?
Vagarist means one whose thought wanders in many directions.
How do you use vagarist in a sentence?
It seemed to be the wild fancy of a vagarist or dreamer.
What part of speech is vagarist?
Vagarist is a noun.
What is the plural of vagarist?
The plural of vagarist is vagarists.

Words near vagarist in the dictionary

  1. vagarians
  2. vagaries
  3. vagarious
  4. vagariously
  5. vagarish
  6. vagarist
  7. vagaristic
  8. vagarists
  9. vagarities
  10. vagarity
  11. vagarous

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: vagarist (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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