Word.ws English Dictionary

estray

/ə.stɹeɪ/

estray noun: an animal that has escaped from its owner; a wandering animal whose owner is unknown. An animal cannot be an estray when on the range where it was raised, and permitted by its owner to run. A lost animal whose owner is known to the party at hand is not an estray.

Noun

estray (plural estrays)

  1. An animal that has escaped from its owner; a wandering animal whose owner is unknown. An animal cannot be an estray when on the range where it was raised, and permitted by its owner to run. A lost animal whose owner is known to the party at hand is not an estray.
  2. (archaic) Stray.
    • [...] All the day / Had been a dreary one at best, and dim / Was settling to its close, yet shot one grim / Red leer to see the plain catch its estray.1855, Robert Browning, Childe Roland to the Dark Tower Came, section VIII

Verb

estray (third-person singular simple present estrays, present participle estraying, simple past and past participle estrayed)

  1. (archaic) To stray.
    • With other Maids to fiſh upon the Shoar; Estrays apart, and leaves her Company1614, Samuel Daniel, Hymen's Triumph

Forms of estray

Noun
pluralestrays
Verb
third-person singular presentestrays
present participleestraying
past participleestrayed
pastestrayed

Origin of estray

From Middle English astrai, from Anglo-Norman estray, from the Old French verb estraier. Etymological doublet with stray.

Questions about estray

What does estray mean?
Estray means an animal that has escaped from its owner; a wandering animal whose owner is unknown. An animal cannot be an estray when on the range where it was raised, and permitted by its owner to run. A lost animal whose owner is known to the party at hand is not an estray.
What part of speech is estray?
Estray can be a noun or a verb.
How do you pronounce estray?
Estray is pronounced /ə.stɹeɪ/.
What is the plural of estray?
The plural of estray is estrays.

Words near estray in the dictionary

  1. estrapade
  2. estrapades
  3. estrapronicate
  4. estratetraenol
  5. estratriene
  6. estray
  7. estrayed
  8. estraying
  9. estrays
  10. estrazinol
  11. estre

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: estray (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Cite this entry: “estray.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/estray. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.