What's the difference between errant and stray?

Errant


Definition:

  • (a.) Wandering; deviating from an appointed course, or from a direct path; roving.
  • (a.) Notorious; notoriously bad; downright; arrant.
  • (a.) Journeying; itinerant; -- formerly applied to judges who went on circuit and to bailiffs at large.
  • (n.) One who wanders about.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) Francis Maude, the Cabinet Office minister, said he would be astonished if the coalition had not enacted a lobbyists' register and a power to recall errant MPs by 2015.
  • (2) To do that, it needed to stamp down on errant food industry practices.
  • (3) "Fighter jets will fly in shifts, giving 24-hour coverage over the president's airspace, so they can intervene quickly if an errant plane gets too close."
  • (4) They also produced soft boots with Velcro straps, parent-friendly, one-strap bindings (though kids can also ride without) and a Riglet Reel tow rope that tacks on to the front of the board so that you can pull your toddler along like an errant spaniel, while giving them a good idea of the snow-riding sensation they are aiming for.
  • (5) The lead stood at two goals before Andre Marriner's errant judgment.
  • (6) That’s why a boycott is such an ineffective path to shaming our errant oligarchs, particularly in the case of LA Clippers owner Donald Sterling.
  • (7) Fisher was forgiven and is busy organising for Momentum , the grassroots Corbyn campaign to bring errant MPs to heel.
  • (8) Being sutureless, no tension is placed on any layer; there is no damage to tissues from an errant suturing technique.
  • (9) Neonatal patients received the lowest rate of errant orders.
  • (10) The next few days will be critical as Beijing weighs up its options, but for now the likelihood is that China will chose cautious diplomatic hedging rather than decisive action against its errant North Korean ally.
  • (11) 49 min: Another half-hearted Paraguay attack ends in failure, when an errant pass is played straight to the feet of one of New Zealand's very well organised back three.
  • (12) Ministers are to revive shelved plans for laws to be introduced before 2015 to regulate lobbyists and recall errant MPs following days of sleaze allegations which may well have damaged the standing of parliament.
  • (13) Can he get these errant types – known disparagingly as à la carte or cafeteria Catholics – to dine from the fixed menu?
  • (14) The purpose of this study was to record prospectively the frequency of and potential harm caused by errant medication orders at two large pediatric hospitals.
  • (15) Mr Holder is also pressing voting rights lawsuits across the county that directly challenge Chief Justice John Roberts’s errant view that the era of racial discrimination in the United States is over.
  • (16) One of my clients waited until midnight for his errant son to visit to play Scrabble with him – the son never arrived.
  • (17) He was prevented from giving Liverpool the first major Premier League win of the Brendan Rodgers' era only by an assistant referee's errant flag for offside in stoppage time.
  • (18) Vickers said Ipso would have an investigative arm and would impose tough sanctions on errant publishers, including fines of up to £1m for systemic wrongdoing, giving it "absolute teeth, very real teeth".
  • (19) As far as much of the audience is concerned, these errant former child stars seem like exotic commodities to be traded on the scandal market, although they are also clearly just young people living under abnormal levels of scrutiny.
  • (20) The combined results of the mutation and adduct characterizations suggest that there are basic differences in the structural configuration of each adduct species which are recognized during errant DNA repair and as a result lead to base changes at a frequency which is relatable to the configuration of the original adduct lesion.

Stray


Definition:

  • (a.) To wander, as from a direct course; to deviate, or go out of the way.
  • (a.) To wander from company, or from the proper limits; to rove at large; to roam; to go astray.
  • (a.) Figuratively, to wander from the path of duty or rectitude; to err.
  • (v. t.) To cause to stray.
  • (v. i.) Having gone astray; strayed; wandering; as, a strayhorse or sheep.
  • (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.
  • (n.) The act of wandering or going astray.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) Stray bottles were thrown over the barriers towards officers to cheers and chants of: “Shame on you, we’re human too.” The Met deployed what it described as a “significant policing operation”, including drafting in thousands of extra officers to tackle expected unrest, after previous events ended in arrests and clashes with police across the centre of the capital.
  • (2) Until that point, Bravo had looked assured, often straying 30 yards off his goal-line and confident enough to try a couple of passes that many goalkeepers would consider too risky.
  • (3) Spatial distribution of the disease correlated with indirect EIA data on healthy urban population (3116 persons examined) and stray dogs (152 animals examined).
  • (4) At peak times 1,300 vehicles an hour will use the lanes, with non-Olympic motorists fined £130 if they stray into them.
  • (5) The helicopter strayed more than a mile into Turkish airspace, but crashed inside Syria after being hit by missiles fired from the jet, Turkish officials said at the time.
  • (6) Guardiola has ever-so-slightly strayed away from what has made Barcelona so brilliant now, and there are certainly questions to be asked about how Busquets-Iniesta-Xavi triumvirate has been disrupted by Cesc Fabregas.
  • (7) Lula responded by insisting that his government would not stray from its quest to protect the Amazon and appointed another high-profile environmentalist, Green party founder Carlos Minc, as his new minister.
  • (8) "Stray bullets are part of my life here," says Jessica, a 17-year-old football coach.
  • (9) Hence stray voltage may threaten farm animal health and production wherever modern animal housing is applied.
  • (10) But in 14 years, the search for international justice in Africa has strayed far from the "never again" principle, and into the murkier waters of deals and fixes.
  • (11) Bedoya then strays offside on the other side of the pitch.
  • (12) In his search for a new economic model for the paper that would take it into a secure digital future, Thompson has been experimenting with innovations that appear to stray from his corporate bunker on the 16th floor of the Times building into the editorial realm.
  • (13) Turkey has said the jet mistakenly strayed into Syrian air space on Friday, but was quickly warned to leave by Turkish authorities and was a mile inside international airspace when it was shot down.
  • (14) You made sure that Mairead "stuck to the story", checking with her at every opportunity that she wasn't going to stray, as you put it.
  • (15) The laboratories without stray light problems reported results with less instrument-to-instrument variation, the results followed a symmetrical distribution, and the mean of the results provided an accurate estimate of the absorbance of the solutions.
  • (16) Others face more niggling problems: in a recent post on the local Facebook group “Eliminate All Stray Dogs”, one resident claimed an unruly pack kept jumping on his car, destroying its windscreen wipers.
  • (17) and other species in stool specimens from stray dogs and cats in Halifax, Nova Scotia.
  • (18) Up to 4.5 million Russians were already expected to change holiday plans after the Turkish military shot down a Russian jet that strayed into Turkish airspace on a bombing mission over Syria, and military operations against Kurdish insurgents in the south-east have added to a sense of crisis.
  • (19) Udall barely mentioned government surveillance on the campaign trail, choosing instead to mount a singular focus on female voters, rarely straying from two topics : contraception and abortion.
  • (20) The four people arrested in the Gloucestershire cull zone were held on suspicion of aggravated trespass after police responded to reports of horns being blown and individuals straying from a public footpath.