rove

verb

1. (intransitive, obsolete)To shoot with arrows (at).

   “And thou […] that with thy cruell dart / At that good knight so cunningly didst roue […]”

2. (intransitive)To roam, or wander about at random, especially over a wide area.

   “Now that he was in his prime, there was no simian in all the mighty forest through which he roved that dared contest his right to rule, nor did the other and larger animals molest him.”

   “And a rovin’, a rovin’, a rovin’ I'll go / For a pair of brown eyes”

3. (transitive)To roam or wander through.

   “Roving the field, I chanced / A goodly tree far distant to behold.”

   “The rein-deer, which in Scandinavia can scarcely exist to the south of the sixty-fifth parallel, descends, in consequence of the greater coldness of the climate, to the fiftieth degree, in Chinese Tartary, and often roves into a country of more southern latitude than any part of England.”

4. (transitive)To card wool or other fibres.

   “Although both [flax and wool] must be roved and spun upon similar principles, each requires peculiar modifications in its machinery.”

5. To twist slightly; to bring together, as slivers of wool or cotton, and twist slightly before spinning.
6. To draw through an eye or aperture.
7. To plough into ridges by turning the earth of two furrows together.
8. To practice robbery on the seas; to voyage about on the seas as a pirate.

   “pirates, roving up and downe the sea”

9. (form-of, past)simple past of rive
10. (form-of, past)simple past of reeve

noun

1. A copper washer upon which the end of a nail is clinched in boatbuilding.
2. A roll or sliver of wool or cotton drawn out and lightly twisted, preparatory to further processing; a roving.
3. The act of wandering; a ramble.

   “In thy nocturnal rove one moment halt.”

name

1. A surname