STRAGGLING • FREE TRANSLATOR.ORG • Definition of Straggling

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verb

Straggle v. i. (past & past part. straggled; pres. part. straggling)

To wander from the direct course or way; to rove; to stray; to wander from the line of march or desert the line of battle; as, when troops are on the march, the men should not straggle.

To wander at large; to roam idly about; to ramble. "The wolf spied out a straggling kid."

To escape or stretch beyond proper limits, as the branches of a plant; to spread widely apart; to shoot too far or widely in growth. "Trim off the small, superfluous branches on each side of the hedge that straggle too far out."

To be dispersed or separated; to occur at intervals. "Straggling pistol shots." "They came between Scylla and Charybdis and the straggling rocks."

adjective

Straggling adj. A. & n. from Straggle, v.

See images of 'Straggling'

Etymology of 'Straggling'

Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48

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"Straggling" Quotes from Famous Books

... about forty-five years before, principally by a number of Dutch families which moved thither from Pennsylvania; but to the rather picturesque little village of the same name, nestling among the pines that fringed the River Rouge, came straggling immigrants or persons grown tired of the solitude and the privations of backwoods life. But to distant portions of the province this thriving village came to be known rather through the terrible reputation of the adjacent swamp than through the thrift, ...

— The Four Canadian Highwaymen • Joseph Edmund Collins

... if they were painted, seem chiefly in possession. In this direction there is a very pretty stretch of shore, out of the town, through the fortifications (which are Vauban's, by the way); through, also, a diminutive public garden or straggling shrubbery, which edges the water and carries its stunted verdure as far as a big Etablissernent des Bains. It was too late in the year to bathe, and the Etablissement had the bank- rupt aspect which belongs to such places out of the season; so I turned my back upon it, ...

— A Little Tour in France • Henry James

... quantity of sewage flowing into the sewers is very great, but it reduces as the population increases, owing to the diversity of the occupations and habits of the inhabitants. In all cases where the residential portions of the district are straggling, and the outfall works are situated at a long distance from the centre of the town, the flow becomes steadier, and the inequalities are not so prominently marked at the outlet end of the sewer. The rate of flow increases more or less gradually ...

— The Sewerage of Sea Coast Towns • Henry C. Adams

... also playing the march from Saul. The first band had now reached the top of the Square, and was scarcely audible from King Street. The reiterated glitter in the sun of memorial cards in hats gave the fanciful illusion of an impossible whitish snake that was straggling across the town. Three-quarters of an hour elapsed before the tail of the snake came into view, and a rabble of unkempt boys closed in ...

— The Old Wives' Tale • Arnold Bennett

... districts behind us, we were in Papenoo, a straggling village of a few hundred people along the road, the houses, all but the half-dozen stores of the Chinese, set back a hundred yards, and the domestic animals and ...

— Mystic Isles of the South Seas. • Frederick O'Brien

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