STRAYING

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 Dictionary entry overview: What does straying mean? 

• STRAYING (adjective)
  The adjective STRAYING has 1 sense:

1. unable to find your way

  Familiarity information: STRAYING used as an adjective is very rare.

 Dictionary entry details 

• STRAYING (adjective)

Sense 1

Meaning:

Unable to find your way

Context example:

found the straying sheep

Similar:

lost (no longer in your possession or control; unable to be found or recovered)

 Context examples 

But sometimes, straying off to the edge of the woods by himself, he gave vent to his grief, and cried it out with loud whimperings and wailings.

(White Fang, by Jack London)

During the past two or three days several cases have occurred of young children straying from home or neglecting to return from their playing on the Heath.

(Dracula, by Bram Stoker)

She played till Fanny's eyes, straying to the window on the weather's being evidently fair, spoke what she felt must be done.

(Mansfield Park, by Jane Austen)

I remember something, too, of the green grave-mounds; and I have not forgotten, either, two figures of strangers straying amongst the low hillocks and reading the mementoes graven on the few mossy head-stones.

(Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë)

He had to eat as he had never eaten before, to handle strange tools, to glance surreptitiously about and learn how to accomplish each new thing, to receive the flood of impressions that was pouring in upon him and being mentally annotated and classified; to be conscious of a yearning for her that perturbed him in the form of a dull, aching restlessness; to feel the prod of desire to win to the walk in life whereon she trod, and to have his mind ever and again straying off in speculation and vague plans of how to reach to her.

(Martin Eden, by Jack London)

Among the great beams, bulks, and ringbolts of the ship, and the emigrant-berths, and chests, and bundles, and barrels, and heaps of miscellaneous baggage—“lighted up, here and there, by dangling lanterns; and elsewhere by the yellow daylight straying down a windsail or a hatchway—were crowded groups of people, making new friendships, taking leave of one another, talking, laughing, crying, eating and drinking; some, already settled down into the possession of their few feet of space, with their little households arranged, and tiny children established on stools, or in dwarf elbow-chairs; others, despairing of a resting-place, and wandering disconsolately.

(David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens)

A moment later he was straying away again from his mother.

(White Fang, by Jack London)

The police of the division have been instructed to keep a sharp look-out for straying children, especially when very young, in and around Hampstead Heath, and for any stray dog which may be about.

(Dracula, by Bram Stoker)

When once more alone, I reviewed the information I had got; looked into my heart, examined its thoughts and feelings, and endeavoured to bring back with a strict hand such as had been straying through imagination's boundless and trackless waste, into the safe fold of common sense.

(Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë)

A peep, and then a long stare; and then a departure from my niche and a straying out into the meadow; and a sudden stop full in front of the great mansion, and a protracted, hardy gaze towards it.

(Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë)