Errant
['er(ə)nt] or ['ɛrənt]
Definition
(adj.) uncontrolled motion that is irregular or unpredictable; 'an errant breeze' .
(adj.) straying from the right course or from accepted standards; 'errant youngsters' .
Checker: Polly--From WordNet
Definition
(a.) Wandering; deviating from an appointed course, or from a direct path; roving.
(a.) Notorious; notoriously bad; downright; arrant.
(a.) Journeying; itinerant; -- formerly applied to judges who went on circuit and to bailiffs at large.
(n.) One who wanders about.
Typed by Joan
Synonyms and Synonymous
a. Wandering, roving, rambling.
Checker: Stan
Definition
adj. wandering: roving: wild: (obs.) thorough (cf. Arrant).—n. a knight-errant.—adv. Err′antly.—n. Err′antry an errant or wandering state: a rambling about like a knight-errant.
Checker: Roy
Examples
- Besides, I have late experience, that errant thieves are not the worst men in the world to have to deal with. Walter Scott. Ivanhoe.
- Nonsense, errant nonsense, as ever was talked! Jane Austen. Emma.
- She yearned towards the perfect Right, that it might make a throne within her, and rule her errant will. George Eliot. Middlemarch.
- He said it in a very agony, and even followed it with an errant motion of his hands as if he could have torn himself. Charles Dickens. Our Mutual Friend.
- He hesitated whether to address the King as the Black Knight-errant, or in what other manner to demean himself towards him. Walter Scott. Ivanhoe.
- I can't turn knight-errant, and undertake to redress every individual case of wrong in such a city as this. Harriet Beecher Stowe. Uncle Tom's Cabin.
- The errant knight, his master, must needs pass us toll-free. Walter Scott. Ivanhoe.
Checker: Roy