STRAY • FREE TRANSLATOR.ORG • Definition of Stray

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adjective

Stray adj. Having gone astray; strayed; wandering; as, a strayhorse or sheep.

Stray line (Naut.), that portion of the log line which is veered from the reel to allow the chip to get clear of the stern eddies before the glass is turned.

Stray mark (Naut.), the mark indicating the end of the stray line.

verb

Stray v. t. To cause to stray. (Obs.)

Stray v. i. (past & past part. strayed; pres. part. straying)

To wander, as from a direct course; to deviate, or go out of the way. "Thames among the wanton valleys strays."

To wander from company, or from the proper limits; to rove at large; to roam; to go astray. "Now, until the break of day, Through this house each fairy stray." "A sheep doth very often stray."

Figuratively, to wander from the path of duty or rectitude; to err. "We have erred and strayed from thy ways." "While meaner things, whom instinct leads, Are rarely known to stray."

Synonyms: To deviate; err; swerve; rove; roam; wander.

noun

Stray n.

Any domestic animal that has an inclosure, or its proper place and company, and wanders at large, or is lost; an estray. Used also figuratively. "Seeing him wander about, I took him up for a stray."

The act of wandering or going astray. (R.)

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Etymology of 'Stray'

Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48

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"Stray" Quotes from Famous Books

... any ears I would have pricked them up at this, for I was very fond of fowl, and I never got any at the Morrises', unless it might be a stray bone ...

— Beautiful Joe • Marshall Saunders

... appear generally to inhabit the N.W. interior. The present was a very large specimen, with a beautifully soft skin, and as it was the only one noticed during a residence of nearly six months at the same place, it was in all probability a stray animal. ...

— Expedition into Central Australia • Charles Sturt

... momentum of the whale—modifying its direction as he struck the surface—involuntarily launched him along it, to a little distance from the centre of the destruction he had made; and with his back to it, he now lay for a moment slowly feeling with his flukes from side to side; and whenever a stray oar, bit of plank, the least chip or crumb of the boats touched his skin, his tail swiftly drew back, and came sideways smiting the sea. But soon, as if satisfied that his work for that time was done, he pushed ...

— Moby Dick; or The Whale • Herman Melville

... me sing for little children, Before their footsteps stray, Sweet anthems of love and duty, To float o'er ...

— Poems • Frances E. W. Harper

... English; Painter's 'Palace of Pleasure' being a treasure-house of Italian works of fiction. Thomas Hoby translated Castiglione's 'Courtier' in 1561. As a proof of the extent to which Italian books were read in England at the end of the sixteenth century, we may take a stray sentence from a letter of Harvey, in which he disparages the works of Robert Greene:—'Even Guicciardine's silver histories and Ariosto's golden cantos grow out of request: and the Countess of Pembroke's "Arcadia" is not green enough ...

— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds

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