errant

• POS: Adjective
• HYPHEN: er=rant

CIDE DICTIONARY

errant, a. [F. errant, p. pr. fr. OF. errer to travel, LL. iterare, fr. L. iter journey; confused somewhat with L. errare to err. See Eyre, and cf. Arrant, Itinerant.].

•  Wandering; deviating from an appointed course, or from a direct path; roving.  [1913 Webster]

  "Seven planets or errant stars in the lower orbs of heaven."  [1913 Webster]
•  Notorious; notoriously bad; downright; arrant.  [1913 Webster]

  "Would make me an errant fool."  [1913 Webster]
•  Journeying; itinerant; -- formerly applied to judges who went on circuit and to bailiffs at large.  Mozley & W.  [1913 Webster]

errant, n. 

 One who wanders about.  Fuller.  [1913 Webster]

OXFORD DICTIONARY

errant, adj.
1 erring; deviating from an accepted standard.
2 literary or archaic travelling in search of adventure (knight errant).

Derivative

errancy n. (in sense 1). errantry n. (in sense 2).

Etymology

ME: sense 1 formed as ERR: sense 2 f. OF errer ult. f. LL itinerare f. iter journey

THESAURUS

errant

aberrant, aberrative, abroad, adrift, all abroad, all off, all wrong, amiss, askew, astray, at fault, awry, beside the mark, circuitous, circumforaneous, corrupt, deceptive, defective, delusive, departing, desultory, deviant, deviating, deviational, deviative, deviatory, devious, digressive, discursive, distorted, divagatory, drifting, errable, erratic, erring, erroneous, error-prone, excursive, fallacious, fallible, false, faultful, faulty, flawed, flitting, floating, footloose, footloose and fancy-free, fugitive, gadding, gypsy-like, gypsyish, heretical, heterodox, illogical, illusory, indirect, itinerant, labyrinthine, landloping, liable to error, mazy, meandering, migrational, migratory, misbehaving, mischievous, naughty, nomad, nomadic, not right, not true, off, off the track, open to error, out, out-of-the-way, peccant, perverse, perverted, planetary, rambling, ranging, roaming, roving, self-contradictory, serpentine, shifting, snaky, straggling, stray, straying, strolling, swerving, traipsing, transient, transitory, transmigratory, turning, twisting, undirected, unfactual, unorthodox, unproved, unreliable, untrue, vagabond, vagrant, veering, wandering, wide, winding, wrong, zigzag

ROGET THESAURUS

errant

Disrepute

N disrepute, discredit, ill repute, bad repute, bad name, bad odor, bad favor, ill name, ill odor, ill favor, disapprobation, ingloriousness, derogation, abasement, debasement, abjectness, degradation, dedecoration, a long farewell to all my greatness, odium, obloquy, opprobrium, ignominy, dishonor, disgrace, shame, humiliation, scandal, baseness, vileness, turpitude, infamy, tarnish, taint, defilement, pollution, stain, blot, spot, blur, stigma, brand, reproach, imputation, slur, crying shame, burning shame, scandalum magnatum, badge of infamy, blot in one's escutcheon, bend sinister, bar sinister, champain, point champain, byword of reproach, Ichabod, argumentum ad verecundiam, sense of shame, disgraced, blown upon, shorn of its beams, shorn of one's glory, overcome, downtrodden, loaded with shame, in bad repute, out of repute, out of favor, out of fashion, out of countenance, at a discount, under a cloud, under an eclipse, unable to show one's face, in the shade, in the background, out at elbows, down at the elbows, down in the world, inglorious, nameless, renownless, obscure, unknown to fame, unnoticed, unnoted, unhonored, unglorified, shameful, disgraceful, discreditable, disreputable, despicable, questionable, unbecoming, unworthy, derogatory, degrading, humiliating, infra dignitatem, dedecorous, scandalous, infamous, too bad, unmentionable, ribald, opprobrious, errant, shocking, outrageous, notorious, ignominious, scrubby, dirty, abject, vile, beggarly, pitiful, low, mean, shabby base, to one's shame be it spoken, Int, fie!, shame!, for shame!, proh pudor!, O tempora!, O mores!, ough!, sic transit gloria mundi!.

Deviation

N deviation, swerving, obliquation, warp, refraction, flection, flexion, sweep, deflection, deflexure, declination, diversion, digression, depart from, aberration, divergence, zigzag, detour, divagation, wandering, vagrancy, evagation, bypaths and crooked ways, byroad, sidling, knight's move at chess, deviating, aberrant, errant, excursive, discursive, devious, desultory, loose, rambling, stray, erratic, vagrant, undirected, circuitous, indirect, zigzag, crab-like, astray from, round about, wide of the mark, to the right about, all manner of ways, circuitously, obliquely, sideling, like the move of the knight on a chessboard.