That's what textwrap.wrap() does; it returns a list of lines, without newlines at the end. It's up to you to do whatever you need to with that.

As an aside, you should probably use a dict for the words and meanings, or an OrderedDict if you want to keep the order.

import textwrap

from collections import OrderedDict

words = ['a', 'the', 'go', 'python']
meanings = ['meaning1', 'meaning2', 'meaning3',
            'Python is a programming language that lets you work more quickly '
            'and integrate your systems more effectively. You can learn to '
            'use Python and see almost immediate gains in productivity and '
            'lower maintenance costs.']

wrapped_meanings = ['\n'.join(textwrap.wrap(meaning)) for meaning in meanings]

dictionary = OrderedDict(zip(words, wrapped_meanings))

for word, meaning in dictionary.items():
    print word
    print meaning
    print

Output:

a
meaning1

the
meaning2

go
meaning3

python
Python is a programming language that lets you work more quickly and
integrate your systems more effectively. You can learn to use Python
and see almost immediate gains in productivity and lower maintenance
costs.

I can't comment. What does this "very long string" look like? I used this code below and it worked fine for me. My very long string was 2,970 characters long.

table = [["Sun"*990 ,696000,1989100000],["Earth",6371,5973.6],
          ["Moon",1737,73.5],["Mars",3390,641.85]]
print(tabulate(table))

Addressing comments. Yes, it is that way because there are no line returns in the string. I'm guessing the author of the package didn't want to arbitrarily add line returns. You can insert your own line returns and tabulate will handle them. The output is dependent on font size and screen width. If the length of the line surpasses your screen width then it wraps. I think that's what you mean by it looks bad. You can output to a file and view it (make sure to turn off any line wrap features).

Here is an example of how to do that.

from tabulate import tabulate
from pathlib import Path

table = [["Sun"*990,696000,1989100000],["Earth",6371,5973.6],
          ["Moon",1737,73.5],["Mars",3390,641.85]]

file_output = Path('test.txt')
file_output.write_text(tabulate(table))

You could use textwrap.wrap and tabulate:

#  pip install tabulate
from textwrap import wrap
from tabulate import tabulate

df_colnames_wrap = {k: '\n'.join(wrap(v, 20))
                    for k,v in df_colnames.items()}

print(tabulate(df.rename(columns=df_colnames_wrap),
               headers='keys', tablefmt='plain'))

Output:

      Lorem ipsum dolor        Consectetur    Fusce imperdiet      Vitae ultricies
               sit amet    adipiscing elit        libero arcu    augue molestie ac
 0                    0                  3                  1                  0.5
 1                    1                  5                  2                  1
 2                    2                  7                  3                  1.5
 3                    3                  9                  4                  2

With float formatting:

print(tabulate(df.rename(columns=df_colnames_wrap)
                 .convert_dtypes(),
               headers='keys', tablefmt='plain',
               floatfmt='.2f'
              ))

Output:

      Lorem ipsum dolor        Consectetur    Fusce imperdiet      Vitae ultricies
               sit amet    adipiscing elit        libero arcu    augue molestie ac
 0                    0                  3                  1                 0.50
 1                    1                  5                  2                 1.00
 2                    2                  7                  3                 1.50
 3                    3                  9                  4                 2.00

See what you think about this. This post-processes textwrap.wrap to do justification:

import textwrap

def wrapme(s):

    width = 64
    lines = s.splitlines()
    result = []
    for l in lines:
        if len(l) < 64:
            result.append(l)
        else:
            breaks = textwrap.wrap( l, width, replace_whitespace=False, break_long_words=True, break_on_hyphens=False )
            for b in breaks[:-1]:
                if len(b) == 64:
                    result.append(b)
                    continue
                insert = 64-len(b)
                words = b.split()
                every = insert // (len(words)-1) + 1
                extra = insert % (len(words)-1)
                for i in range(extra):
                    words[i] += ' '
                result.append( (' '*every).join(words) )
            result.append( breaks[-1] )
    return result


for s in (
"Meta 335 to 95\n\nAmzn 188 to 96\n\nNflx 700 to 286\n\nSpot 305 to 80\n\nCRM 311 to 160\n\nSnap 57 to 10\n\nAmd 164 to 60\n\nARKK 126 to 39\n\nThese are all stocks off their Nov 2021 highs. Most of the market was poor phrasing, but this is some good perspective (instead of comparing vs the indices)"
,
"Meta 335 to 95\n\nAmzn 188 to 96\n\nNflx 700 to 286\n\nSpot 305 to 80\n\nCRM 311 to 160\n 57 to 10\n\nAmd 164 to 60\n\nARKK 126 to 39\n\nThese are all stocks off their Nov 2021 highs. Most of the market was poor phrasing, but this is some good perspective (instead of comparing vs the indices)"
,
"Meta 335Spot0  0nnR 1 o10n5 o1\\Ad14t 0nnRK16t rl tocks off their Nov 2021 highs. Most of the market was poor phrasing, but this is some good perspective (instead of comparing vs the indices)"
):
    for line in wrapme(s):
        print(f"|{line}|")

Output:

|Meta 335 to 95|
||
|Amzn 188 to 96|
||
|Nflx 700 to 286|
||
|Spot 305 to 80|
||
|CRM 311 to 160|
||
|Snap 57 to 10|
||
|Amd 164 to 60|
||
|ARKK 126 to 39|
||
|These  are  all  stocks  off  their  Nov 2021 highs. Most of the|
|market  was  poor  phrasing,  but  this is some good perspective|
|(instead of comparing vs the indices)|
|Meta 335 to 95|
||
|Amzn 188 to 96|
||
|Nflx 700 to 286|
||
|Spot 305 to 80|
||
|CRM 311 to 160|
| 57 to 10|
||
|Amd 164 to 60|
||
|ARKK 126 to 39|
||
|These  are  all  stocks  off  their  Nov 2021 highs. Most of the|
|market  was  poor  phrasing,  but  this is some good perspective|
|(instead of comparing vs the indices)|
|Meta 335Spot0  0nnR 1 o10n5 o1\Ad14t 0nnRK16t rl tocks off their|
|Nov  2021  highs. Most of the market was poor phrasing, but this|
|is some good perspective (instead of comparing vs the indices)|