STRAGGLE • FREE-TRANSLATOR.COM • Definition of Straggle

Translators

Dictionaries

Courses

Other

Home

Add this Dictionary
to your website!
See more options...

/strˈægəl/ Listen

noun

Straggle n. The act of straggling. (R.)

verb

Straggle v. i. (past & past part. straggled; pres. part. straggling)

To wander from the direct course or way; to rove; to stray; to wander from the line of march or desert the line of battle; as, when troops are on the march, the men should not straggle.

To wander at large; to roam idly about; to ramble. "The wolf spied out a straggling kid."

To escape or stretch beyond proper limits, as the branches of a plant; to spread widely apart; to shoot too far or widely in growth. "Trim off the small, superfluous branches on each side of the hedge that straggle too far out."

To be dispersed or separated; to occur at intervals. "Straggling pistol shots." "They came between Scylla and Charybdis and the straggling rocks."

See images of 'Straggle'

Etymology of 'Straggle'

Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48

Share |

"Straggle" Quotes from Famous Books

... thin, fat—every class between clerks and tramps; every condition between prosperity and destitution. A procession was also constantly flowing from the hospital to the quartermaster's stores—the same procession, with one military touch; for this time the men did not straggle, but were marched single file in charge of a sergeant. The next procession was from the stores to the men's quarters; but now each man had a great bundle under his arms containing his entire kit ...

— The Relief of Mafeking • Filson Young

... business; we went daily under fire to satisfy our appetite, and put our head in the loin's mouth for a piece of bread. Sometimes, to minimise the risk, we would all dismount before we came in view of the house, straggle in severally, and give what orders we pleased, like disconnected strangers. In like manner we departed, to find the cart at an appointed place, some half a mile beyond. The Colonel and the Major had each a word or two of English—God help their ...

— St Ives • Robert Louis Stevenson

... people were there, Max and Dudley having been pressed into the service of filling cardboard drums with sweets for what Max called "the everlasting tree." The tree itself stood in a corner of the room, a colossal but lop-sided plant with a lamentable tendency to straggle about the lower branches, and an inclination to run to weedy and unnecessary length about ...

— The Wharf by the Docks - A Novel • Florence Warden

... Lyn and the West Lyn foam down to the little beach, and the prodigal flowering of bushes and shrubs. Follow the East Lyn up to Watersmeet, which is about two miles from Lynmouth through one of the most beautiful wooded gorges in England. Past the hotels you go, and a little straggle of small modern houses, past the untidy little patch which would be the suburb of a larger community, with upturned boats and washing drying in the sun, and within five minutes a turn of the road hides Lynmouth and the sea from your backward look, and you stand ...

— Lynton and Lynmouth - A Pageant of Cliff & Moorland • John Presland

... see any use in that, they haven't any milk, or wool either. Let them stand still as they are. They've been worked to their full value; all the fruit has dropped off of them already. Don't you see how they straggle along aimlessly, alone, untended? Why, I do believe they're dumb with age; they don't even bleat at being away from the rest of the flock. They seem perfectly harmless—just silly. Let's go back ...

— Amphitryo, Asinaria, Aulularia, Bacchides, Captivi • Plautus Titus Maccius

More quotes...