meander

meander \mee-AN-der\, verb:

1. to proceed by or take a winding or indirect course: The stream meandered through the valley.
2. to wander aimlessly; ramble: The talk meandered on.
3. Surveying. to define the margin of (a body of water) with a meander line.

noun:
1. Usually, meanders. turnings or windings; a winding path or course.
2. a circuitous movement or journey.
3. an intricate variety of fret or fretwork.

I had forgotten about muggers on our walk down the avenue, but as we meandered over toward Broadway the street got darker and I became acutely conscious of all we had read about them.
-- Larry McMurtry, Somebody's Darling, 1978

The rest of us climbed the cliffs and hills, looked at entrenched meanders, terminal moraines, glacial detritus, relief maps of the Delaware Water Gap, and outcroppings of the Wissahickon Mica Schist.
-- Renata Adler, Speedboat, 1976

The term meander comes from the Greek Maiandros which is the name of a winding river in Caria. The noun form entered English in the 1500s, and the verb form shortly followed.