nomad

From Middle French nomade, from Latin nomas (“wandering shepherd”), from Ancient Greek νομάς (nomás, “roaming, wandering, esp. to find pasture”), from Ancient Greek νομός (nomós, “pasture”). Compare Numidia.

• (UK) IPA^(key): /ˈnəʊmæd/
• (US) IPA^(key): /ˈnoʊmæd/

nomad (plural nomads)

1. (anthropology) A member of a society or class who herd animals from pasture to pasture with no fixed home.
   • 1587, Philip Sidney & al. translating Philippe de Mornay as A Woorke Concerning the Trewnesse of the Christian Religion, viii, p. 113:

     The life of the people called the Nomads or Grazyers...

   • 2013 August, Henry Petroski, "Geothermal Energy" in American Scientist, Vol. 101, No. 4:

     Energy has seldom been found where we need it when we want it. Ancient nomads, wishing to ward off the evening chill and enjoy a meal around a campfire, had to collect wood and then spend time and effort coaxing the heat of friction out from between sticks to kindle a flame. With more settled people, animals were harnessed to capstans or caged in treadmills to turn grist into meal.

2. (figuratively) Synonym of wanderer: an itinerant person.
3. (figuratively) A person who changes residence frequently.
   • 2010, J. Knight, Unloved, →ISBN, page 58:

     Once again Judy was a nomad, moving to yet again another destination.

   • 2014, Dan Lovett, Anybody Seen Dan Lovett?: Memoirs of a media nomad, →ISBN, page 10:

     I made my exit down I-75, heading south. After a 40-year odyssey as a media nomad, I will be closing the circle in a place where my life had never been better.

   • 2016, Daniel Coffeen, Reading the Way of Things: Towards a New Technology of Making Sense, →ISBN:

     Poise is the posture of the nomad, moving while always at home.

4. (figuratively, sports) A player who changes teams frequently.
   • 2008, John Devaney, Full Points Footy's WA Football Companion, →ISBN, page 282:

     With the recruitment of South Australian football nomad, and eventual legend of the game, Phil Matson, Subiaco would improve considerably in 1912.

   • 2014, Wayne Stewart, Stan the Man: The Life and Times of Stan Musial, →ISBN, page 49:

     Unlike players who were often traded, baseball nomads who carried a hobo's bindle rather than a bat on their shoulders, Musial stayed put in St. Louis.

   • 2015, Pete Cava, Indiana-Born Major League Baseball Players, →ISBN:

     Between 1996 and 2003, Lewis was a baseball nomad. At various times he signed contracts with San Diego, Detroit, Oakland, Cincinnati, Philadelphia, the New York Mets, Cleveland, and the Chicago Cubs.

• (wanderer): See Thesaurus:vagabond

nomad (comparative more nomad, superlative most nomad)

1. Synonym of nomadic.

• "nomad, n.", in the Oxford English Dictionary, Oxford: Oxford University Press.

• Damon, Doman, Mando, mad on, mad-on, mando, monad

• IPA^(key): /nǒmaːd/
• Hyphenation: no‧mad

nòmād m (Cyrillic spelling но̀ма̄д)

1. nomad