(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.
Waif
Definition:
(n.) Goods found of which the owner is not known; originally, such goods as a pursued thief threw away to prevent being apprehended, which belonged to the king unless the owner made pursuit of the felon, took him, and brought him to justice.
(n.) Hence, anything found, or without an owner; that which comes along, as it were, by chance.
(n.) A wanderer; a castaway; a stray; a homeless child.
Example Sentences:
(1) Fringe right parties do tend to collect a number of waifs and strays.
(2) The fiercest denunciation came from the minister without portfolio, Kenneth Clarke, who characterised Ukip candidates as waifs and strays, feeding on prejudice about immigration.
(3) After a hard day at the Vatican, the pontiff likes little better than watching films in which a resolute priest battles the Nazis and a circus strongman takes a waif as his slave.
(4) "The fringe right parties do tend to collect a number of waifs and strays.
(5) The brochure was promoting a scheme where you take waif kids and kids of the pauper class and the slums before they could be corrupted by the poverty and crime of England and send them to Australia for education and opportunity in schools like Fairbridge, where we would become strong and long-limbed by working the farms,” Hill says.
(6) Waif-like figures, mostly young men from Morocco and Algeria, rushed to grab the polystyrene cups.
(7) It was symptomatic of the first half that Stoke’s wonder waif, Bojan Krkic, harassed Cazorla into coughing up possession on halfway in the 25th minute before out-fighting Per Mertesacker to set up a Stoke attack that culminated in a dangerous corner.
(8) Chapter 39 also forgot about women altogether when it spoke of outlawry, for women were not outlawed they were “waived”, which meant left as a “waif”.
(9) Five minutes in and you realise that this is not a permanent home – simply the Swedish base camp of a huge nomadic family with its roots in the 1960s, whose friends and collaborators connect some of the most unlikely names, from Ornette Coleman to Ari Up from the Slits, from Martina Topley-Bird to waifs and strays such as "that strange young man that Cameron met in the street and let live in our house for a while".
(10) Last week even a waif washing car windscreens at traffic lights was executed.
(11) Dramas set in these times tend either to be full of the sort of tubercular waifs whose lives are so mud-spattered they become slapstick, or cheeky orphan chimney sweeps saying things like “Cor it’ll be nippy by St Modwen’s Day and no mistake, guvnor!” next to a lovely shire horse.
(12) The lines were written only a few days before his death: Through these pale cold days What dark faces burn Out of three thousand years, And their wild eyes yearn, While underneath their brows Like waifs their spirits grope For the pools of Hebron again For Lebanon's summer slope.
(13) Ukip has "fruitcakes, loonies, waifs and strays" in its ranks and among its supporters, Kenneth Clarke has said after a spate of stories questioning the credentials of the party's candidates in this week's local elections.
(14) But it is now also a parliamentary waif without a home or useful purpose.
(15) Waifs were everywhere; the odder-looking the better.
(16) This caustic ensemble comedy is about a neurotic actress (Julianne Moore) haunted by her dead mother, a repellent Bieber-esque teen star (terrific up-and-comer Evan Bird) and a deranged waif (Mia Wasikowska) with a dark past.
(17) When I mention that I live near Tony Benn , and often see him taking an hour to buy a pint of milk because he patiently engages with every passing waif and stray who wants his advice on something or other, Farage's eyes light up.
(18) The teenage waif became a symbol of sanctions-busting, of the weasel ways in which western governments eroded the campaign to isolate Pretoria.
(19) Since the supermodels of the 90s – the likes of Elle Macpherson and Claudia Schiffer – retired their bronzed Amazonian limbs, the favoured look has been vacant and waif-like: an ethereal type, easily made bland and identikit for the catwalk after hair and makeup.
(20) Ukip said that Lynam, the face of television sport during the 1980s, sent the party rewritten lyrics to Send in the Clowns , mocking Conservative critics who lambasted Ukip as a bunch of fruitcakes, loonies, waifs and strays .