stray

STRAY/stɹeɪ/

Noun pluralstrays

15 meanings of stray

1
verbintransitive
To drift away from a direct route or an intended course; to wander off.
Hikers who stray from the marked path risk getting lost in the fog.
The speaker kept straying from his topic to tell stories about his dog.
Similarwander, deviate, drift, digress
Note
Nothing blameworthy is implied here, and the subject need not even be alive: John Denham's Cooper's Hill (1642) has the Thames straying among the valleys, meandering rather than lost. It usually takes from, and the from-phrase can be a place or a subject alike: stray from the path, stray from the topic.
2
nouncountable
A domestic animal that lacks a pen, a home or companions and instead wanders at large or is lost.
A thin stray had been sleeping under the porch for a week.
The shelter takes in hundreds of strays every winter.
Note
The noun was made from the verb: Anglo-Norman estray named an animal that had wandered, and English kept both stray and the older form estray. The adjective in stray cat and stray dog was formed in turn from this noun, so the three parts of speech form a chain that starts with wandering.
3
adjective
Having wandered off or gone astray; roaming loose.
Volunteers feed the stray dogs that gather behind the market.
A stray sheep had wandered onto the highway and stopped traffic.
Similarlost, homeless, wandering, loose
4
wander offverbintransitive
To wander away from one's company or beyond proper limits; to roam at large or go astray.
Cattle often stray onto the road when the fence is down.
The toddler had strayed beyond the playground gate while his father was on the phone.
Similarwander, roam, drift
5
adjective
Out of its proper place; misplaced.
The editor caught a stray apostrophe in the headline just before it went to print.
A stray spark from the fireplace left a scorch mark on the rug.
Similarerrant, misplaced, random
Note
Before a noun it picks out one small thing that has ended up where it was not meant to be: a stray comma, a stray apostrophe, a stray spark. The sense is close to misplaced, but it adds the idea of chance, a thing that wandered there rather than one deliberately put in the wrong spot.
6
do wrongverbintransitive
To turn away from duty or from what is morally right; to do wrong.
Even devoted public servants can stray when the temptation is large enough.
After twenty years of marriage he strayed, and the affair ended everything.
Similarerr, sin, lapse, transgress
7
lost personnouncountable
Someone who has gone astray, either by getting physically lost or by drifting through life without a settled place or purpose.
The teacher found the last stray from the field trip asleep on a bench in the museum.
Their apartment became a refuge for strays, from homesick students to friends between jobs.
Similarstraggler, waif
Note
A person can be a stray the way a beast or a lost article is: unowned and unclaimed. John Donne makes the picture explicit in his Devotions upon Emergent Occasions (1624), asking what a waif and stray is the man who bears no mark of God, waif and stray being the old pair from the legal term for ownerless goods. Today the word is gentler, often fond: a refuge for strays.
8
random bulletnounabbreviationellipsis
Ellipsis of stray bullet.
Police said the woman on the porch was struck by a stray from the gunfight down the block.
Parents on the street keep their children indoors at night for fear of a stray.
Note
Clipped from stray bullet, the short noun keeps the full meaning and takes the ordinary plural, strays. It is at home in speech and song (Queen Latifah's Just Another Day has hit by a stray), while careful writing usually spells out the whole phrase so that no reader pictures a lost animal.
9
casual insultnounslangcountable
A casual or offhand insult.
Midway through roasting his roommate, the comedian threw a stray at the whole city of Cleveland.
Fans were trading strays in the comments all night after the game.
Similardig, jab, shot, swipe
Note
Casual slang, most often in the phrase catch a stray: to be hit by a jab tossed off in passing or aimed at someone else. The picture comes from the stray bullet, and the fun lies in the collateral damage, as when a comedian roasting one person takes a swipe at a whole city on the way.
10
nouncountable
An instance of wandering away or going astray.
The dog's latest stray took him three miles from home.
A short stray from the main road led the cyclists to a hidden lake.
Similardetour, excursion, wander

11
misleadverbtransitive
To cause someone or something to stray; to lead astray.
Hath not else his eye / Strayed his affection in unlawful love,
c. 1594, William Shakespeare, “The Comedie of Errors”
To ease myself I was compelled to leave my basket behind me, trusting to return and find it, if I should ever reach safety and discover on what pathless hill I had been strayed.
1899, John Buchan, No Man's Land
Similarmislead
Note
The verb could once take an object: Shakespeare's The Comedy of Errors asks whether a husband's eye has strayed his affection in unlawful love, meaning led it astray. The narrator of John Buchan's story No Man's Land (1899) still uses it in the passive, wondering on what pathless hill he had been strayed. Lead astray is the everyday way to say it.
12
radio noisenouncountable
A single burst of atmospheric interference in radio reception.
The operator learned to tell a stray from a real signal by its short, sharp crackle.
Summer thunderstorms filled the receiver with strays.
Similarstatic
Note
Radio engineers of the 1920s wrote of static or strays for the crackles the atmosphere puts into a receiver, as distinct from a transmitter's signal. Each stray is a short burst, which is how an operator tells it apart, though one that lands just before an expected echo can be mistaken for it. Later engineering speaks of radio-frequency interference, with strays among its causes.
13
BDSMnouncountable
In BDSM, a submissive who has not committed to submitting to any particular dominant.
Oppositecollared
Note
Its opposite in BDSM is collared, said of a submissive who wears a dominant's collar as a sign of commitment. The animal picture is deliberate: like a dog with no owner, a stray belongs to no one yet, and can play with different dominants without breaking any promise.
14
common landnounhistoricalcountable
An area of common land set aside for the use of domestic animals.
The village geese were turned out on the stray beside the church.
Quarrels over who could pasture animals on the stray were settled at the manor court.
Similarcommon
Note
The word belongs to the old village economy, in which households shared common ground for their geese and cattle. Here it names the land, not an animal, so beasts on the stray were exactly where they should be, the reverse of the animal that has wandered.
15
nounarchaicBritish
An item of movable property whose owner is unknown.
By ancient custom, waifs and strays found within the manor fell to the lord if no owner came forward.
The court ordered the stray to be held until its rightful owner could be traced.
Note
Old British property law paired it with waif, and the set phrase waifs and strays named movable goods that turned up with no known owner. The term belongs to legal history rather than present-day law, and it now lives almost entirely inside that pair, with waif as the word to read beside it.

Practice

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Origins

Meanings 2, 7–10, 12–15

From Middle English stray, from Anglo-Norman estray and Old French estrai, from the verb stray.

Meanings 1, 4, 6, 11

From Middle English strayen, partly from Old French estraier, from Vulgar Latin via strata, and partly from Middle English strien ("to spread, scatter"), from Old English strēġan ("to strew").

Meanings 3, 5

From Middle English stray, from the noun stray.