Errant
adj, noun ·Moderate ·High school level
Definitions
- 1 A knight-errant.
- 1 Straying from the proper course or standard, or outside established limits.
"In that there are just seven Planets or errant Stars in the lower Orbs of heaven: but it is now demonstrable unto sense, that there are many more"
- 2 Roving around; wandering.
- 3 Prone to erring or making errors; misbehaving.
"We ran down the street in pursuit of the errant dog."
- 4 Obsolete form of arrant (“complete; downright, utter”). alt-of, obsolete
"Thy company, if I slept not very well / A nights, would make me an errant fool […]"
- 1 uncontrolled motion that is irregular or unpredictable wordnet
- 2 straying from the right course or from accepted standards wordnet
Antonyms
All antonymsExample
More examples"The investigation revealed that the root cause of the crash was an errant wire bridging electrical contacts."
Etymology
From Middle English erraunt [and other forms], from Anglo-Norman erraunt, from Old French errant, the present participle of errer (“to walk (to); to wander (to); (figuratively) to travel, voyage”), and then: * from Vulgar Latin iterāre (compare Late Latin itinerāre, itinerāri (“to travel, voyage”)), from Latin iter (“a route (including a journey, trip; a course; a path; a road)”), ultimately from Proto-Indo-European *h₁ey- (“to go”); and * from Latin errantem, the accusative feminine or masculine singular of errāns (“straying, errant; wandering”), the present active participle of errō (“to rove, wander; to get lost, go astray; to err, wander from the truth”), ultimately from Proto-Indo-European *h₁ers- (“to flow”). Doublet of arrant.
Related phrases
More for "errant"
Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.