straggle
Americanverb (used without object)
-
straggles,
present (3rd person singular)
-
straggled,
past participle, past
-
straggling
present participle
-
to spread or be spread in a scattered fashion or at irregular intervals.
The trees straggle over the countryside.
-
to lag behind others.
Some organizations have caught on to this concept, but others are straggling behind.
-
to stray from the road, course, or line of march.
-
to wander about in a scattered fashion; ramble.
verb
-
to go, come, or spread in a rambling or irregular way; stray
-
to linger behind or wander from a main line or part
Other Word Forms
Derived Forms
Inflected Forms
Participles
Conjugated Forms
Present
-
stragglesimple
-
stragglessimple
-
have straggledperfect
-
has straggledperfect
-
am stragglingprogressive
-
are stragglingprogressive
-
is stragglingprogressive
-
have been stragglingperfect progressive
-
has been stragglingperfect progressive
Past
-
straggledsimple
-
had straggledperfect
-
was stragglingprogressive
-
were stragglingprogressive
-
had been stragglingperfect progressive
Future
Etymology
Origin of straggle
First recorded in 1350–1400; Middle English straglen, of uncertain origin, perhaps a variant of strackle (unrecorded), frequentative of obsolete strake “to go, move” ( see -le ( def. )); cf. stagger ( def. )
Explanation
To straggle is to wander in an indirect, meandering way. Lions often go for the small antelopes that straggle behind the herd. To straggle is to veer from a route, or to wander aimlessly behind everyone else. If you plan to go to the movies but end up at a store and then a friend's house, you straggled. Straggling is a type of digressing — to straggle is to get sidetracked. In the military, straggling often means to stay on leave too long or be in the wrong position for a battle. When people straggle, they've gone off-course.
Vocabulary lists containing straggle
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Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
See Examples For:
The emails that straggle through are litanies of the wreckage he’s seeing every day, interspersed with guilt and remorse at their separation.
From Seattle Times ● Dec. 8, 2021
He was a night owl, coding way past midnight and up in time to straggle into the office late in the morning.
From New York Times ● Jul. 8, 2021
The move comes as lawmakers straggle back to Washington for an abbreviated preelection session, as hopes are dimming for another coronavirus relief bill — or much else.”
From Fox News ● Sep. 8, 2020
He’s glad tourists are scarcer too, even though they still straggle past on their way north to self-quarantines and social distancing.
From Los Angeles Times ● Apr. 19, 2020
They admitted it didn’t pay to keep it for just us straggle of kids who went there.
From "The Teacher’s Funeral" by Richard Peck
Thirty miles south, Old Lighthouse Road straggles to an end in a waterside housing development where air conditioning units sit on raised platforms.
From Seattle Times ● Nov. 28, 2021
Second, he never wore his hair in long blond straggles, like a stoner Messiah; that, however, is the style favored by Moondog, as an accompaniment to his cacophonous shirts and his silver Ugg boots.
From The New Yorker ● Mar. 29, 2019
It straggles, it is too long, but it has some of Bean's brio.
From The Guardian ● Mar. 31, 2013
Few plants are as useless, ugly and loathsome as the creeping puncture weed that straggles haphazardly across most of the western U.S.
From Time Magazine Archive
I stressed to the assembled press the need for mutual communication and support between the Africans and Afro- Americans whose straggles were interlocked.
From "The Autobiography of Malcolm X" by Alex Malcolm X;Hailey
The crowd straggled toward City Hall, where Kauffman launched into his speech.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Feb. 8, 2026
Now, day after day, he and the other students straggled into their classroom at 11:30 a.m.
From Los Angeles Times ● Jan. 23, 2020
The families of the defendants straggled out the front door of the courthouse, some holding up their forearms to shield their faces from the cameras.
From New York Times ● Aug. 9, 2017
It’s an understandably more upbeat bunch than the group that straggled home from the Maui Invitational having dropped four of five.
From Washington Post ● Dec. 27, 2016
They straggled down the highway in a loose body, blocking the way from the white line to the frazzled weeds that bordered the sun-heated concrete slab.
From "Invisible Man" by Ralph Ellison
This time around he follows straggling young people in Peru, Taiwan, and Sri Lanka, first separately until the geographical distance between them collapses and their timelines overlap.
From Los Angeles Times ● Dec. 31, 2024
With nearly all the straggling mail ballots counted as of Wednesday, turnout in the midterm reached about 64%.
From Seattle Times ● Nov. 25, 2022
The whole thing took 15 minutes, and ended with a police officers shouting at straggling photographers and guests to get out of the street already so a city bus could come through.
From Washington Post ● Nov. 23, 2022
"It was really challenging straggling down the rock faces to get to this shoreline and count all the plastic that was there," she said.
From BBC ● Nov. 16, 2022
They had not gone far on the fifth day when they left the last straggling pools and reed-beds of the marshes behind them.
From "The Fellowship of the Ring" by J.R.R. Tolkien
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