stranded

1. 1
   adjective

   Abandoned or left marooned somewhere, with no available means of getting away.

   Like a ship's crew left on a desert island, waiting for a rescue that may never come.

   Hundreds of passengers were stranded overnight when the ferry service was suspended.

   The expedition found itself stranded on the ice when the supply plane failed to return.

   Similarstuck, trapped, abandoned

   Note

   A person rather than a ship is left high and dry here, the figurative use the verb strand also carries. Kipling's Mrs. Bathurst (1904) shows the typical shape: found myself stranded, then what is lacking (lunchless) and where (on the sea-front). The adjective is not comparable. Someone is stranded or is not, so it pairs with place and duration (stranded overnight, stranded at the station) rather than with very.

2. 2
   verb

   Simple past and past participle of strand.

   The sudden blizzard stranded dozens of motorists along the interstate.

   Engine failure stranded the ferry in the middle of the channel.

   Note

   One spelling does two jobs: the simple past (the blizzard stranded them) and the past participle after have or be (they had been stranded). Because strand itself ranges widely, the form can describe a beached boat, a deserted person, a runner left on base when an inning's third out falls, or a rope with one strand broken. Context, not form, tells you which.

3. 3
   adjective

   Made by combining or bundling thinner wires together into a single strand.

   Stranded cable is preferred in robotics, where the wires flex constantly.

   The technician replaced the brittle solid wire with a stranded version.

   Oppositesolid

   Note

   An electrician's distinction: stranded wire is built from many fine wires bundled into one conductor, and its counterpart is solid wire. For the same cross-section, the stranded kind bends more easily and resists fatigue better, which is why it is chosen wherever a cable must flex. Solid wire keeps its shape. Stranded wire gives way to movement without breaking.

4. 4
   adjective

   Run aground on a shore or reef, so that a vessel can no longer float free.

   At low tide, the old barge was left stranded on the mudflats.

   The yacht ran onto the sandbar and remained stranded until morning.

   Similaraground, beached, grounded

   Oppositeafloat

   Note

   Seamanship's term for a hull resting on the bottom, whether on a shore, reef, shoal or mudflat, and unable to float free without outside help or a rising tide. A storm or a navigational error strands a ship. Afterward it lies stranded, and the phrase usually names what holds it: stranded on the reef, stranded on the bar.

5. 5
   adjectivein compounds

   Having the specified number or kind of strands, as named by a preceding term.

   Viral genomes may be single-stranded or double-stranded.

   Traditional climbing ropes were three-stranded before modern braided designs appeared.

   Note

   Found only at the end of hyphenated compounds, with a number or descriptive word in front: single-stranded, double-stranded, triple-stranded. Where the wiring sense says only that fine wires are bundled together, this one counts or characterizes the strands themselves. In this meaning it never stands alone, so a phrase like a stranded molecule would be read in another sense entirely.

6. 6
   adjective

   Having become impossible or difficult to recover or return to useful service.

   Analysts warned that aging power plants could become stranded assets.

   The investment was effectively stranded once the new rules took effect.

   Note

   Regulation and finance use it in fixed pairs: stranded costs, stranded assets, stranded investment. Value is lost not through wear but because rules, technology or markets change before an asset's useful life is over. Utility deregulation, for instance, can leave undepreciated, redundant equipment to be allocated as stranded costs. Like a vessel in the run-aground sense, the asset still exists but cannot be brought back into service.

7. 7
   adjective

   Left without an expressed complement, as a preposition separated from the noun phrase it governs.

   English readily allows a preposition to be stranded, as in 'the house she grew up in.'

   The preposition 'for' is stranded in the sentence 'That's the thing I was waiting for.'

   Note

   Grammarians use the word for any word that could govern a complement but has been left without one beside it. Most often it is a preposition whose object has been questioned or relativized away, as in Who did you give it to? The familiar label is preposition stranding, though the idea covers adpositions generally. The complement is not missing from the meaning, only from its usual place.

8. 8
   adjective

   Left narrowly short of a century or similar batting milestone because the team's innings ended.

   The opener was left stranded on 96 not out after the tail collapsed.

   Rain ended play with the captain stranded two runs shy of a century.

   Note

   A cricket batter is stranded when the innings closes around them. They are still not out but short of a century or another milestone, because the last partners were dismissed or the target was reached first. The usual frame is left stranded on a score (stranded on 96), and sympathy is built into the phrase: the batter failed through no dismissal of their own.

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