STRAGGLING • DICTIONARY ONE.COM • Definition of Straggling

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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."

adjective

Straggling adj. A. & n. from Straggle, v.

See images of 'Straggling'

Etymology of 'Straggling'

Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48

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"Straggling" Quotes from Famous Books

... gossip, did her sewing, watched events, as the case might be, was not conscious of her servitude or anxious to market it. Sometimes she shared her outlook with an old woman—a horrible, greasy go-between, with straggling grey hair and a gin-inflamed face. She chatted with this beldame happily, she cupped her vile old dewlap, or stroked her dishonourable head; sometimes a man in shirt sleeves was with her, treated her familiarly, with rude embraces, with kisses, nudges and leers. She accepted ...

— Lore of Proserpine • Maurice Hewlett

... the street was very lively. It woke to its work about seven o'clock, at the time when the newsboys made their appearance together with the day laborers. The laborers went trudging past in a straggling file—plumbers' apprentices, their pockets stuffed with sections of lead pipe, tweezers, and pliers; carpenters, carrying nothing but their little pasteboard lunch baskets painted to imitate leather; gangs of street workers, their overalls soiled ...

— McTeague • Frank Norris

... attendants had shaken off the crowd who had followed them from Guildford along the Pilgrims' Way and now, the mounted archers having beaten off the more persistent of the spectators, they rode at their ease in a long, straggling, glittering train over the dark ...

— Sir Nigel • Arthur Conan Doyle

... a piece of paper—a significant document, for it explained the motive for the crime. Kid Wolf read it and understood. It was written in straggling handwriting: ...

— Kid Wolf of Texas - A Western Story • Ward M. Stevens

... toward the lake; there were but a few houses. It was about eleven or twelve o'clock or after and the good people in the straggling cottages thereabout had put out their lights and retired to slumber before that ...

— Pee-wee Harris on the Trail • Percy Keese Fitzhugh

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