Hold one picture: a river crossing flat ground. It cannot cut straight across, so it swings left, then right, then left again, and the same shape repeats all the way to the sea. Seen from above it is a ribbon of bends. Nothing has gone wrong; this is simply what a river does when the land lets it take its time. Every use of meander keeps that ribbon. A road can have it, a person walking can have it, a talk can have it, and a line of decoration can have it folded into square corners.
From the word’s history
The word comes from Latin Maeander, from Ancient Greek Maiandros, the name of a river in Asia Minor (now the Menderes in Turkey) that was known for its winding course. So the picture is not a metaphor added later: the word began as the name of one very bendy river, and then became the general word for that shape.
這個字來自拉丁文 Maeander，再往前是古希臘文 Μαίανδρος，也就是小亞細亞（今天土耳其）一條以彎曲出名的河的名字（現在叫 Menderes）。所以那個彎彎曲曲的畫面不是後來才加上去的比喻：這個字本來就是一條很會彎的河的名字，之後才變成「那個形狀」的通稱。
Wiktionary entries for meander (noun and verb); etymology text supplied in this batch's evidence packet, source_ref kaikki:3f6f69a190036ae4:653066302:29167
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