Circumforaneous

Pronunciation

• UK IPA: /sɜːkÉ™mfəˈɹeɪnɪəs/

Origin

From Latin circum ("round about") (compare English circum-) with -foraneous, from forum ("market place").

Full definition of circumforaneous

Adjective

1. Wandering from place to place or market to market.
• 1992, Peter Bowler, Ron Bell, The superior person's second book of weird and wondrous words, page 38:Gyrovagues: Monks who were accustomed to wander from place to place. In modern times, perhaps, any of the various circumforaneous proselytizers who go from door to door—Jehovah's Witnesses, Mormons, et al.
• 2008, James Boice, NoVA: a novel, page 83:It is perfect for a thirteen-year-old child of NoVA when in the throes of another fit of aimlessness and maddening, ravenous boredom in which only the entering of a mall, the circumforaneous wandering amid others of your kind, or the buying of a CD (usually more like the stealing of a CD) can cure the disease.
2. (by extension) Indirect, roundabout, or unnecessarily complex.
• 2002, Philip Mirowski, Machine dreams: economics becomes a cyborg science, page 43:The reason that this has not been the subject of extended commentary in science studies was that the path along which thermodynamics wrought its magic was unprecedentedly indirect and circumforaneous:...