Stravaig
noun, verb ·Uncommon ·Advanced level
Definitions
- 1 An act of strolling or wandering aimlessly; a ramble, a stroll, a wander. Ireland, Northern-England, Scotland
"They cursed, they swore, they drank, they danced, they fought—first wi' whatever folk happened to fa' in wi' them on the stravaig—and then, castin' out amang theirsells, wi' ane anither, till they had a' three black een—and siccan noses!"
- 1 To stroll or wander aimlessly on (a road, etc.); to ramble. Ireland, Northern-England, Scotland, transitive
"[I]n them days, you see the people used to be hanged outside o' the town, […] [I]n them days they did not attind to the comforts o' the people at all, but put them into a cart, all as one as a conthrairy pig goin' to the market, and stravaiged them through the town to the gallows, that was full half a mile beyant it; […]"
- 2 To stroll or wander; to ramble, to roam. Ireland, Northern-England, Scotland, intransitive
"Dear gudeman, what has put it i'your head that our bairn stravaigs i'the night-time?"
- 3 Of a river, road, etc.: to meander, to wind. Ireland, Northern-England, Scotland, figuratively, intransitive
"Down the main street goes the road, but a path stravaiges by fields and along the grey palings of Warren Manor."
Synonyms
All synonymsExample
More examples"[I]n them days, you see the people used to be hanged outside o' the town, […] [I]n them days they did not attind to the comforts o' the people at all, but put them into a cart, all as one as a conthrairy pig goin' to the market, and stravaiged them through the town to the gallows, that was full half a mile beyant it; […]"
Etymology
Possibly borrowed from Scots stravaig (“(verb) to wander idly, roam; to traverse; (noun) roaming about; casual ramble, stroll”), probably an aphetic form of English extravage (“(obsolete, rare) to go beyond the scope of something, digress; to talk wildly, ramble”), influenced by Scots vaig (“to wander idly, roam”). Extravage is a learned borrowing from Medieval Latin extrāvagārī (“to stray outside limits, wander”) (whence extravagate), from Latin extrā (“beyond, outside of”, preposition) (ultimately from Proto-Indo-European *h₁éǵʰs (“out”)) + vagārī (the present active infinitive of vagor (“to ramble, roam, stroll about, wander”), from vagus (“rambling, roaming, strolling, wandering”) (further etymology uncertain) + -or (the first-person singular present passive indicative of -ō (suffix forming regular first-conjugation verbs))).
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Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.