All who wander are not lost | Hacker News Reader

All who wander are not lost

humbledmba.com

32 pointsjaf12duke6 comments

I'm so used to reading "Not all who wander are lost" that my brain originally parsed this headline as "All who wander are lost". Then I clicked through and the URL was "all-who-wonder-are-not-lost", so I went back to check and see if I read it wrong. And I had read it wrong, but because I'd missed the "not". So I thought, "That's funny; the submitter must have made the same mistake and submitted it as 'wander' even though the article's title says 'wonder'." Then I clicked through again and the article's title said "wander".

I don't really have a point. I just wanted to share my mostly-irrelevant tale of mental tomfoolery.

I also noticed the odd phrasing. I'm not sure if the overlap was intentional or not, but the other phrasing is so strong this headline immediately felt wrong to me. I believe it's originally from Tolkien, in The Lord of The Rings:

    All that is gold does not glitter,
    Not all those who wander are lost;
    The old that is strong does not wither,
    Deep roots are not reached by the frost.

    From the ashes a fire shall be woken,
    A light from the shadows shall spring;
    Renewed shall be blade that was broken,
    The crownless again shall be king.

https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/All_that_is_g...

Interestingly, the sentiment seems to share similarities with the article.

Ha, and I am so accustomed to the illogically worded gold/glitter aphorism that I mentally remembered the wanderlost line incorrectly, even though the correct version sounds better.

"All who wander are not lost" would mean "No wanderers are lost". I've seen bumper stickers with this awkward phrasing, but I think the intended meaning is "Not all who wander are lost".

It's archaic English, like the quotes outside punctuation rule.

Heck I'm 41 and still not sure what to be when I grow up, despite an exit and several train wrecks.

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