Straggling
from
The Collaborative International Dictionary of English v.0.48
Straggle \Strag"gle\, v. i. [imp. & p. p. {Straggled}; p. pr. &
vb. n. {Straggling}.] [Freq. of OE. straken to roam, to
stroke. See {Stroke}, v. t.]
1. 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. --Dryden.
[1913 Webster]
2. To wander at large; to roam idly about; to ramble.
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The wolf spied out a straggling kid. --L'Estrange.
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3. 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.
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Trim off the small, superfluous branches on each
side of the hedge that straggle too far out.
--Mortimer.
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4. To be dispersed or separated; to occur at intervals.
"Straggling pistol shots." --Sir W. Scott.
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They came between Scylla and Charybdis and the
straggling rocks. --Sir W.
Raleigh.
[1913 Webster]
from
Moby Thesaurus II by Grady Ward, 1.0
115 Moby Thesaurus words for "straggling":
aimless, amorphous, broadcast, capricious, casual, circumforaneous,
desultory, diffuse, disarticulated, discontinuous, discrete,
discursive, disjunct, disordered, dispersed, dispread,
disproportionate, disseminated, dissipated, distributed,
divagatory, dragged out, drawn, drawn out, drifting, elongated,
errant, erratic, extended, fitful, flitting, floating, footloose,
footloose and fancy-free, formless, frivolous, fugitive, gadding,
gratuitous, gypsy-like, gypsyish, haphazard, hit-or-miss,
immethodical, inchoate, incoherent, indiscriminate, irregular,
landloping, lengthened, meandering, meaningless, migrational,
migratory, misshapen, nomad, nomadic, nonsymmetrical,
nonsystematic, nonuniform, orderless, planless, prolongated,
prolonged, promiscuous, protracted, pulled, rambling, random,
ranging, roaming, roving, scattered, senseless, shapeless,
shifting, sparse, spasmodic, sporadic, spread, spun out, straggly,
strained, straying, stretched, stretched out, strewn, strolling,
strown, strung out, systemless, taut, tense, tight, traipsing,
transient, transitory, transmigratory, unarranged, unclassified,
undirected, ungraded, unjoined, unmethodical, unordered,
unorganized, unsorted, unsymmetrical, unsystematic, ununiform,
vagabond, vagrant, vague, wandering, widespread
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