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  1. vagrant love

Definitions

American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition

  1. n. One who wanders from place to place without a permanent home or a means of livelihood.
  2. n. A wanderer; a rover.
  3. n. One who lives on the streets and constitutes a public nuisance.
  4. adj. Wandering from place to place and lacking any means of support.
  5. adj. Wayward; unrestrained: a vagrant impulse.
  6. adj. Moving in a random fashion; not fixed in place: "Thanks to a vagrant current of the Gulf Stream, a stretch of the Kola coast is free of ice year round” ( Jack Beatty).

Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia

  1. Wandering from place to place; roving, with uncertain direction or destination; moving or going hither and thither; having no certain course.
  2. Uncertain; erratic.
  3. Of or pertaining to one who wanders; unsettled; vagabond.
  4. In medicine, wandering: as, vagrant cells (wandering white corpuscles of the blood).
  5. n. A wanderer; a rover; a rambler.
  6. n. An idle stroller; a vagabond; a loafer; a tramp: now the ordinary meaning.
  7. n. In law the word vagrant has a much more extended meaning than that assigned to it in ordinary language, and in its application the notion of wandering is almost lost, the object of the statutes being to subject to police control various ill-defined classes of persons whose habits of life are inconsistent with the good order of society. In the English statutes vagrants are divided into three grades: idle and disorderly persons, or such as, while able to maintain themselves and families, neglect to do so, unlicensed peddlers or chapmen, beggars, common prostitutes, etc.; rogues and vagabonds, notoriously idle and disorderly persons, fortune-tellers and other like impostors, public gamblers and sharpers, persons having no visible means of living and unable to give a good account of themselves, etc.; incorrigible rogues—that is, such as have been repeatedly convicted as rogues and vagabonds, jail-breakers, and persons escaping from legal durance, etc. In the United States the statutes are diverse, but in their general features include to a greater or less extent beggars, drunken parents who refuse or fail to support their children, paupers when dissolute and sick. prostitutes, public masqueraders, tramps, truants, etc.

Wiktionary

  1. n. A person without a home or job.
  2. n. A wanderer.
  3. n. ornithology A bird found outside its species’ usual range.

GNU Webster's 1913

  1. adj. Moving without certain direction; wandering; erratic; unsettled.
  2. adj. Wandering from place to place without any settled habitation.
  3. n. One who strolls from place to place; one who has no settled habitation; an idle wanderer; a sturdy beggar; an incorrigible rogue; a vagabond.

WordNet 3.0

  1. adj. continually changing especially as from one abode or occupation to another
  2. n. a wanderer who has no established residence or visible means of support

Etymologies

  1. From Middle English vagraunt ("wandering about"), from Anglo-Norman wakerant, wacrant, walcrant ("vagrant"), Old French wacrant, waucrant ("wandering about"), present participle of wacrer, waucrer, walcrer ("to wander, wander about as a vagabond"), from Frankish *walkrōn (“to wander about”), frequentative form of *walkōn (“to walk, wander, trample, stomp, full”), from Proto-Germanic *walkōnan, *walkanan (“to twist, turn, roll about, full”), from Proto-Indo-European *walg-, *walk- (“to twist, turn, move”). Cognate with Old High German walchan, walkan ("to move up and down, press together, full, walk, wander"), Middle Dutch walken ("to knead, full"), Old English wealcan ("to roll"), Old English ġewealcan ("to go, walk about"), Old Norse valka ("to wander"), Latin valgus ("bandy-legged, bow-legged"). More at walk. (Wiktionary)
  2. Middle English vagraunt, probably alteration of Old French wacrant, present participle of wacrer, to wander, of Germanic origin. (American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition)

Examples

  • “The effect was to strengthen the prejudice which held that playgoing was immoral in itself, and that an actor deserved to be treated as a 'vagrant' -- the class to which he legally belonged.”

    English Literature and Society in the Eighteenth Century

  • “Some of these lichens are not attached to any substrate and are known as vagrant lichens or Wanderflechten.”

    Namib desert

  • “She refused to call a vagrant or a street person anything other than god's people.”

    CNN Transcript Nov 16, 2008

  • “What we are hearing about the home, Nancy, is that it was known as a vagrant home.”

    CNN Transcript Dec 9, 2005

  • “This thriftless slave of passion, this child-man, this much condemned clog to the progress of Southern civilization is called the vagrant Negro.”

    Twentieth Century Negro Literature Or, A Cyclopedia of Thought on the Vital Topics Relating to the American Negro

  • “This bold suggestion was greeted with general approval save by the squire, who protested that a man could not be called a vagrant who had paid seventy dollars in cash for his clearing and was never known to beg or steal.”

    David Malcolm

  • “It has to be remembered that the vagrant is a dangerous person in more ways that one.”

    Crime and Its Causes

  • “It seems to you that you could never endure a total failure, and you hardly see how you could bear, with any sort of equanimity, even the vacant gaze or restless movement that would bespeak a vagrant interest.”

    The Story Hour

  • “Every man that has ever undertaken to instruct others can tell what slow advances he has been able to make, and how much patience it requires to recall vagrant inattention, to stimulate sluggish indifference, and to rectify absurd misapprehension.”

    Life Of Johnson

  • “Was friendly fate flying danger signals by arranging and accentuating this vivid contrast, in order to recall his vagrant wits, to cement his wavering allegiance?”

    At the Mercy of Tiberius

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synonyms (15)

Words with the same meaning

  1. wandering
  2. erratic
  3. unsettled
  1. vagabond
  2. roving
  3. gangrel
  1. circumforaneous
  2. vagrom
  3. arrant
  1. wanderer
  2. tramp
  3. floater
  1. caird
  2. hedgebird
  3. gaber-lunzie

equivalents (1)

Other words for ‘vagrant’

  1. unsettled

same context (22)

Words that are found in similar contexts

  1. wayward
  2. nomadic
  3. errant
  4. homeless
  1. idle
  2. itinerant
  3. capricious
  4. aimless
  1. fleeting
  2. unruly
  3. adventurous
  4. deprave
  1. lawless
  2. lunatic
  3. sportive
  4. restless
  1. stray
  2. wretched
  3. undisciplined
  4. lustful
  1. disorderly
  2. nameless

rhymes (2)

Words with the same terminal sound

  1. flagrant
  1. fragrant

reverse dictionary (62)

Words that contain this word in their definition

  1. beachcomber
  2. sundowner
  3. tramp
  4. bum
  5. hobo
  6. vagabond
  7. vagrancy
  8. epithite
  9. loiter
  10. loiterer
  11. landlouper
  12. landlouping
  1. casual
  2. gross
  3. tinkard
  4. truandise
  5. trull
  6. vagrantly
  7. vagrantness
  8. vagrom
  9. vague
  10. blackguard
  11. protectory
  12. rin-thereout
  1. roamer
  2. roguish
  3. skipper-bird
  4. gangrel
  5. caird
  6. canter
  7. circumforaneous
  8. gang-there-out
  9. gyrovagi
  10. landleaper
  11. landloping
  12. clochard
  1. piker
  2. Rodney
  3. vagile
  4. derelict
  5. flotsam
  6. rogue
  7. vagrant
  8. vagant
  9. skelder
  10. prog
  11. reform school
  12. roustabout
  1. sarabaite
  2. street person
  3. stroller
  4. tramper
  5. woolgathering
  6. arrant
  7. extravagant
  8. night-walker
  9. Randy
  10. roguery
  11. benthos
  12. meroplanktonic
  1. truant
  2. whip

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‘vagrant’ has been looked up 2968 times, loved by 8 people, added to 48 lists, and has a Scrabble score of 11.