wandering jew
noun
Simple meaning
A Jewish shoemaker who, in Christian tradition.
Pronunciation
Say it like this:
wahnderihngjooSay the bold part a little louder.
IPA pronunciation (US)
ˈwɑndɚɪŋˈdʒu
This word is pronounced essentially the same in American and British English, so one transcription covers both.
IPA (International Phonetic Alphabet) is a standard way of writing speech sounds.
Definition
Everyday modern meanings first, grouped by part of speech.
noun
A Jewish shoemaker who, in Christian tradition, taunted Jesus Christ on the way to his (Jesus') crucifixion and for that was condemned to wander the Earth until Jesus' return (ie. the second coming).
A legendary Jew condemned to roam the world for mocking Jesus at the Crucifixion
Any plant of three species of spiderworts, Tradescantia pallida, Tradescantia fluminensis, and Tradescantia zebrina.
The plant Saxifraga stolonifera.
Alternative letter-case form of wandering Jew ("plant").
Word Aura™
How this word commonly comes across.
Aura for this meaning
This meaning: A Jewish shoemaker who, in Christian tradition, taunted Jesus Christ on the way to his (Jesus') crucifixion and for that was condemned to wander the Earth until Jesus' return (ie. the second coming).
Used this way, wandering jew is a reasonably familiar word that usually carries little praise or criticism of its own. It usually sounds natural in a wide range of settings.
- Emotional tone
- Neutral
- Formality
- Neutral
- Intensity
- Not strongly marked
- How common
- Moderately common
- Connotation
- Matter-of-fact
- Usage feel
- Neutral and straightforward
Word Aura describes common impressions, not a measurement. Tone changes with sentence, speaker, relationship and situation.
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Dictionary data from Wiktionary via the Free Dictionary API. Simple meanings, combinations and word intelligence are built from verified reference data, no AI is used to load this page.