To go in a particular direction. The verb to wend, which survives mainly in this cliché, here means “to turn.” (It had numerous other meanings, all now obsolete.) This term was known in the late fourteenth century, appearing in the anonymous Cursor Mundi. It was used for about two hundred years, was largely forgotten, and then was revived in the early nineteenth century. Numerous writers used it, including Dickens: “As she wended her way homewards” (Nicholas Nickleby, 1839).