What's the difference between stagger and stray?

Stagger


Definition:

  • (n.) To move to one side and the other, as if about to fall, in standing or walking; not to stand or walk with steadiness; to sway; to reel or totter.
  • (n.) To cease to stand firm; to begin to give way; to fail.
  • (n.) To begin to doubt and waver in purposes; to become less confident or determined; to hesitate.
  • (v. t.) To cause to reel or totter.
  • (v. t.) To cause to doubt and waver; to make to hesitate; to make less steady or confident; to shock.
  • (v. t.) To arrange (a series of parts) on each side of a median line alternately, as the spokes of a wheel or the rivets of a boiler seam.
  • (n.) An unsteady movement of the body in walking or standing, as if one were about to fall; a reeling motion; vertigo; -- often in the plural; as, the stagger of a drunken man.
  • (n.) A disease of horses and other animals, attended by reeling, unsteady gait or sudden falling; as, parasitic staggers; appopletic or sleepy staggers.
  • (n.) Bewilderment; perplexity.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) Clinton lost the presidency and Democrats lost those seats, as Democrats suffered staggering defeats across two branches of government.
  • (2) On admission, neurological examination revealed staggering gait and the right cerebellar ataxia showing dysmetria and dysdiadochokinesis.
  • (3) These observations suggest that the inner dynein arms in Chlamydomonas axonemes are aligned not in a single straight row, but in a staggered row or two discrete rows.
  • (4) You’d be staggered by the number of dimwitted debutantes who stand for photos next to cakes iced with the famous double-C. You know how you wanted a Spider-Man cake when you were little, and your mum made you Spider-Man cake, and it was the happiest birthday of your life?
  • (5) There are rumours that this is the case again and I can't imagine what these people are thinking, it staggers me.
  • (6) Terminase, the DNA packaging enzyme of phage lambda, binds to lambda DNA at a site called cosB, and introduces staggered nicks at an adjacent site, cosN, to generate the cohesive ends of virion lambda DNA molecules.
  • (7) When allowance was made for specific pairing between extrahelical and helical domains, the so-called D-staggered (D = 670 A) alignment of molecules was preferred, as opposed to a nonstaggered, or nematic, alignment.
  • (8) Staggerer cerebellar cortex exhibits the greatest fluorescence with most terminals appearing as matted tangles adjacent cell bodies.
  • (9) Speaking about the forthcoming T-charge, Khan said: “It’s staggering that we live in a city where the air is so toxic that many of our children are growing up with lung problems.
  • (10) The metabolism of 5-hydroxytryptamine (5-HT) in the CNS was investigated in four kinds of morphologically different ataxic mice; reeler, staggerer, weaver and Purkinje cell degeneration mutants, and in hypocerebellar mice experimentally produced by injection of cytosine arabinoside.
  • (11) The Saints, who started the day third in the table, went marching on thanks to their own swish play and some staggering defending by the visitors.
  • (12) The sliding splint-staples, generally two, are placed in staggered positions behind the sternum (11 cases--funnel chest) or in front of the sternum (2 cases--pigeon chest).
  • (13) water retention, depression, transient staggering and phlebitis).
  • (14) Facebook Twitter Pinterest Yemen government ground forces and Saudi-led air strikes attack Houthi militias The blockade – which is also being enforced in the air and on land – has choked a fragile economy already staggering under the impact of a six-month civil conflict pitting Yemeni forces loyal to the President Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi, now exiled in Riyadh, against Houthi rebels allied to his predecessor and rival, Ali Abdullah Saleh.
  • (15) Lucie Faucherre, junior policy analyst, Gender Equality and Women’s Rights OECD , Paris, France, @luciefaucherre Include youth voices: Today, young people under 30 make up a staggering 50% of our world’s population.
  • (16) The men's list was published in September and saw Johnny Depp on top with a staggering $75m in annual earnings.
  • (17) The staggering figure – one of the worst bombings in 13 years of war in Iraq – has cast a pall on the Muslim holiday of Eid al-Fitr, which marks the end of the holy month of Ramadan and which begins on Wednesday in Iraq .
  • (18) The main symptom "incoordination" (ataxia, asynergy, paresis, paralysis) is used by us more precisely only in case of impairment of nervous system by neoplastic infiltrations and does not signify as possible symptoms of general physical weakness, for example faltering, staggering, tumbling or lameness.
  • (19) In the presence of Co+2 ion, the primer specificity is altered so that all forms of duplex DNA molecules can be labeled at their unique 3'-ends regardless of whether such ends are staggered or even.
  • (20) In examining two different sets of experiments, it is proposed that staggered joint interpolation is the underlying planning strategy.

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.