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stray

[strey]

verb (used without object)

to deviate from the direct course, leave the proper place, or go beyond the proper limits, especially without a fixed course or purpose; ramble: to stray from the main road.

to wander; roam: The new puppy strayed from room to room.

to go astray; deviate, as from a moral, religious, or philosophical course: to stray from the teachings of the church.

to digress or become distracted.

noun

a domestic animal found wandering at large or without an owner.

any homeless or friendless person or animal.

a person or animal that strays: the strays of a flock.

strays, Radio. static.

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Stray is one of our favorite verbs.

So is skedaddle. Does it mean:

to spend time idly; loaf.

to run away hurriedly; flee.

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adjective

straying or having strayed, as a domestic animal.

10.

found or occurring apart from others or as an isolated or casual instance; incidental or occasional.

11.

Radio. undesired: stray capacitance.

Origin:
1250–1300; (v.) Middle English strayen, aphetic variant of astraien, estraien < Middle French estraier < Vulgar Latin *extrāvagāre to wander out of bounds (see extravagant); (noun) Middle English, in part derivative of the v., in part < Anglo-French stray, Middle French estrai, derivative of estraier

Related forms

stray·er, noun

un·stray·ing, adjective

Synonyms
1. rove, range. 2. meander. 3. err.

Dictionary.com Unabridged
Based on the Random House Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2012.
Cite This Source

Link To stray

Example Sentences

The police were at a loss for a motive and said the woman might have been hit by a stray bullet.

It also doesn't matter if you hunt stray cats for sport.

At weekends and holidays, stray bullets whiz as often as fireworks.

EXPAND

The police were at a loss for a motive and said the woman might have been hit by a stray bullet.

It also doesn't matter if you hunt stray cats for sport.

At weekends and holidays, stray bullets whiz as often as fireworks.

The foundation plans to finance a sterilization program on the island to reduce the stray overpopulation.

And because these systems cannot stray from their canned phrases, their abilities are limited.

Throw in the weirdo ballots with lizard people, stray marks and indecipherable dots, and the error rate grows even more.

Jarrett swings the loop easily as he heads down the sage-covered ridge toward a stray.

They're fun to chase, especially when they inspire you to stray outside the way you'd usually play a game.

Yes, the stray graduate student who sees you at the supermarket will notice, and perhaps scuttle off to tell his or her cronies.

Alas, it is also a place where petty politicians crush the joy out of life, and where the police are afraid of stray chickens.

Feral cats are the offspring of stray or abandoned household pets.

We have a cat that adopted us after living as a stray.

The payoffs for a few stray pet hairs and the occasional drop of drool are enormous, however.

Be sure to monitor them and remove stray growth regularly.

Even in the blackest dark, there are still a few stray photons of light.

If he's going to stray from the path, he needs to know where the path is.

Wisely again, he does not stray too far down that beguiling track.

Istanbul is crawling with stray dogs, and a big program exists to deal with them.

The money would be better spent cleaning up stray space garbage and keep our satellites safe.

One case aside, even the best available fishing equipment and regulations will result in a few stray snags.

Gates had to stray from the hackers' rigid moral code to become a mainstream success.

The neighbor said it was a stray and that they weren't keeping it.

Iran has taken a phlegmatic view of the stray missiles that have landed on its territory.

On land, canvasback movements are clumsy and the ducks seldom stray too far from the water's edge.

Light pollution is caused by stray artificial light from sources that are too bright, poorly aimed or both.

Those heretics who stray from that goal risk becoming nonpersons in their fields.

The base has deadlier quarry to seek out than stray hounds.

Oliver, a beagle, was a stray living in a shelter when he was adopted.

Not much, but enough for urban commuting or back-road hooning if you don't stray far from home.

My missive would be lost or tossed as a stray crank.

It symbolises a legal limbo into which no law-abiding society should ever willingly stray.

Scientists know little about where great white sharks migrate when they stray from coastal feeding areas.

By mid-afternoon, a half-dozen detectives swarmed the forest, painstakingly gathering the garbage and collecting stray gems.

The sea water was also laced with boric acid, which can soak up stray neutrons that the control rods miss.

Mesa was looking for stray sheep when he came across the dinosaur fossil.

They then surround the lens and stop stray light from entering bouncing around the lens as you shoot.

But a stray gun can do far more damage than a stray dime bag.

The box is lined with lead to shield the x-ray detector from stray radiation.

Unlike others bags we've reviewed, there was nary a loose thread or stray seam to be found.

Picking up some stray offcut, he would begin to smile.

Though they travel a fair distance in search of food, they never stray far from water.

The idea is that, if a child has a more stable home life, he or she will be less likely to stray into crime and drugs.

If its ideas are right, the handful of dust that evolution has shaped into humanity will rarely stray too far off course.

There's a café, and that's it-that and the stray dogs.

Fonteyn had an insouciance which allowed her to stray across boundaries and emerge as crisp as royalty itself.

The fish meticulously maintain their holes, clearing away any stray sand or debris.

If there is a failing in this book, it is that the authors sometimes stray toward naïve optimism.

They now frequently stray into towns and suburbs in search of food.

The roar warns off intruders and helps round up stray members of the pride.

Like those stray puzzle pieces, the remaining bits of eucalyptus forest are scattered.

Extracting a deeply embedded conical tooth-easily marred by a stray blow-was precise, delicate work.

Officials created a program to promote the adoption of stray dogs near the site.

But the popular online encyclopedia won't stray far from its open-source ideals.

But since they can't stray from their prerecorded phrases, their capabilities are limited.

But you can do it anytime you find a stray gem growing along a country road or in a friend's garden.

Although it's also a commerce site, the fee structure and rating system stray from eBay conventions.

Some folks argue that pointing out the spinach or stray parsley is the right thing to.

Usually, the spins are constantly knocked about by random collisions and stray magnetic fields.

There's the handyman, who's brought a stray cat that's been.

When forecasting individual company profits, they tend not to stray far from the line of the company.

Or perhaps a stray cow or goat has wandered into harm's way.

Chan was inspired to make this nutritious salad when she spotted a stray bag of edamame in her freezer.

Several packs of wolves have appeared and they seem to have made easy meals of any stray dogs left behind by their owners.

Casco or either of his friends was a target, or if he was the victim of a stray bullet.

Ribbeck stated that this attack must have been made by a stray dog rather than a coyote, however.

Reverse camber rocker makes it almost impossible slip out or catch a stray edge-even in the frostiest conditions.

If you are a pacer, clear yourself a path so that you don't trip over a stray shoe mid-answer.

As wildlands disappear, lions stray onto farms and ranches in search of prey.

And that whether and where their thoughts tend to stray is a better predictor of their feelings than what they're actually up.

But he cautioned that colleges, despite financial pressures, can't stray from donors' intent:.

Who knew that academics had so much time to scour their profession's paper of record for stray blog entries, with.

No, seriouslygang fights and stray bullets happen inside and immediately around the slums.

For weeks, as workers drilled natural gas deposits nearby, stray methane worked into tiny.

One is for cosmic rays to collide with stray atoms in interstellar.

They only stray into the scientific world occasionally and tangentially, and they are easy to identify.

The weave's stronger elastication squeezes the body so tightly that it suppresses stray oscillations in the muscles and skin.

Sometimes, however, the contributors seem to stray too far from their academic disciplines.

But even that game didn't stray from the fundamentals.

Elderly women watched by stray cats search for the best picks from the city's rubbish skips.

Hopefully the above comment didn't stray too far off topic.

Also, air and ground systems can be tricked, because gas can stray as it rises to the surface.

Stray from the straight and narrow path of righteousness and be damned, with no proper sense of degree.

They frequently stray into towns and suburbs in search of food.

His images are so precise that it's almost impossible to retouch any stray elements after the photo has been taken.

When stories are written primarily to convey a set of ideas they cease being literature and stray into propaganda.

These cats stray into areas of human habitation because of the destruction of their habitat.

But the movie did stray away from the books wayyy too much.

Just a stray thought that occurred to me after writing my last comment.

She was found as a stray puppy and taken in by the generous family.

The four ports occupy one side of a reel around which you wrap stray cables, keeping things tidy and tangle-free.

There always exist incentives to stray from the rules.

They are cautiously breaking new ground, but never stray far from their ancestral fires.

The seawater was also laced with boric acid, to soak up stray neutrons that the control rods missed.

But it's a closed-back design with less propensity to subject your officemates to stray beats.

Certain socialized services can offset its externalities, but stray too far from the source at your peril.

They suggest that the team may have been confused by stray light from these bright galaxies.

COLLAPSE

Collins

World English Dictionary

stray (streɪ)

—vb
1.	to wander away, as from the correct path or from a given area
2.	to wander haphazardly
3.	to digress from the point, lose concentration, etc
4.	to deviate from certain moral standards

—n
5.	a. a domestic animal, fowl, etc, that has wandered away from its place of keeping and is lost
	b. (as modifier): stray dogs
6.	a lost or homeless person, esp a child: waifs and strays
7.	an isolated or random occurrence, specimen, etc, that is out of place or outside the usual pattern

—*adj*
8.	scattered, random, or haphazard: a stray bullet grazed his thigh

[C14: from Old French estraier, from Vulgar Latin estragāre (unattested), from Latin extrā- outside + vagāri to roam; see astray, extravagant, stravaig]

'strayer

—n

Collins English Dictionary - Complete & Unabridged 10th Edition
2009 © William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd. 1979, 1986 © HarperCollins
Publishers 1998, 2000, 2003, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2009
Cite This Source

Etymonline

Word Origin & History

stray

c.1300, aphetic of O.Fr. estraier "wander about," lit. "go about the streets," from estree "route, highway," from L.L. via strata "paved road" (see street). On another theory, the O.Fr. is from V.L. *estragare, a contraction of *estravagare, representing L. extra vagari

EXPAND

"to wander outside" (see extravagant). Fig. sense of "to wander from the path of rectitude" is attested from early 14c. The noun meaning "domestic animal found wandering" is earlier (early 13c.), from O.Fr. estraié "strayed," pp. of estraier. The adj. is first recorded c.1600.

COLLAPSE

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