errant

Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day for March 5, 2008 is: errant • \AIR-unt\ • adjective 1 : traveling or given to traveling 2 a : straying outside the proper path or bounds b : moving about aimlessly or irregularly c : behaving wrongly Examples: "'Move! Move! Move!' cried Helen, chasing him from corner to corner with a chair as though he were an errant hen." (Virginia Woolf, The Voyage Out, 1915) Did you know? "Errant" has a split history. It comes from Anglo-French, a language in which two confusingly similar verbs with identical spellings ("errer") coexisted. One "errer" meant "to err" and comes from the Latin "errare," meaning "to wander" or "to err." The second "errer" meant "to travel," and traces to the Latin "iter," meaning "road" or "journey." Both "errer" homographs contributed to the development of "errant," which not surprisingly has to do with both moving about and being mistaken. A "knight-errant" travels around in search of adventures. Cowboys round up "errant calves." An "errant child" is one who misbehaves. (You might also see "arrant" occasionally -- it's a word that originated as an alteration of "errant" and that usually means "extreme" or "shameless.") See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.