stravaig

Syllables: stra·veigUK/stɹəˈveɪɡ/

More pronunciations (1)Fewer pronunciations

Ireland/st̪rɑˈveːɡ/

stravaig verb: to stroll or wander aimlessly on (a road, etc.); to ramble.

Verb

stravaig (third-person singular simple present stravaigs, present participle stravaiging, simple past and past participle stravaiged)

(Ireland, Northern England, Scotland, transitive) To stroll or wander aimlessly on (a road, etc.); to ramble.
- [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...[1834, Samuel Lover, “The Curse of Kishogue”, in Legends and Stories of Ireland (Second Series), London: Baldwin and Cradock, […]; and sold by W. F. Wakeman, […], →OCLC, page 314
- Innes, stravaiging the square and wynds in his apple-cart, jingled his weights in vain, unable to shake even moneyed children off their stools; […]1896, J[ames] M[atthew] Barrie, “End of the Jacobite Rising”, in Sentimental Tommy: The Story of His Boyhood, London; Paris: Cassell and Company […], →OCLC, page 341
(Ireland, Northern England, Scotland, intransitive) To stroll or wander; to ramble, to roam.
- Dear gudeman, what has put it i'your head that our bairn stravaigs i'the night-time?1818, James Hogg, chapter I, in The Brownie of Bodsbeck; and Other Tales. […], volume I, Edinburgh: […] [James Ballantyne & Co.] for William Blackwood, […]; London: John Murray, […], →OCLC, page 7
- Would you have an old woman like me stravaiging about the shore by myself?1871, William Black, “Touching Certain Problems”, in A Daughter of Heth. […], 3rd edition, volume II, London: Sampson Low, Son, & Marston, […], →OCLC, page 85
Synonyms:

amble, gallivant, saunter
(Ireland, Northern England, Scotland, figuratively, intransitive) Of a river, road, etc.: to meander, to wind.
- Down the main street goes the road, but a path stravaiges by fields and along the grey palings of Warren Manor.1928, C[atherine] A[my] Dawson Scott, Oh! Foolish Kitty, London: Selwyn & Blount, →OCLC, pages 164–165

Noun

stravaig (plural stravaigs)

(Ireland, Northern England, Scotland) An act of strolling or wandering aimlessly; a ramble, a stroll, a wander.
- 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!1834 July, [John Wilson], “Noctes Ambrosianae. No. LXVI.”, in Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine, volume XXXVI, number CCXXIV, Edinburgh: William Blackwood; London: T[homas] Cadell, […], →OCLC, page 145
- There's passages pretty near all under and round this city, to them who knows them. I've gone a dark stravage into pretty near every one first and last.1935, John Masefield, chapter III, in The Box of Delights: Or When the Wolves were Running, London: William Heinemann, published 1964, →OCLC, page 75
Synonyms:

saunter

Examples of stravaig in a sentence

And they do be stravaiging about always and not contented at all.1929, Elizabeth Bowen, chapter VIII, in The Last September, London: Jonathan Cape […], published 1960, →OCLC, part 1 (The Arrival of Mr. &...
It is tedious work, training clematis over low posts, so that its beauty does not stravaig up the walls but lies open under the eye; but on the edge of the town many gardeners grew it thus.1946, Rebecca West [pseudonym; Cicily Isabel Fairfield], “Greenhouse with Cyclamens I”, in A Train of Powder, New York, N.Y.: The Viking...
Everyone knows Frank Robertson skives off work and stravaigs about the countryside breaking hearts.2016, Kate Blackadder, chapter 2, in A Time to Reap, Anstey, Leicestershire: Linford, F. A. Thorpe (Publishing), published 2017, →ISBN...

Synonyms of stravaig

Forms of stravaig

Verb
third-person singular present	stravaigs
present participle	stravaiging
past participle	stravaiged
past	stravaiged
alternative form	stravaige
alternative form	stravage
Noun
plural	stravaigs

Origin of stravaig

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))).

Words formed from stravaig

Words that rhyme with stravaig

Questions about stravaig

What does stravaig mean?: Stravaig means to stroll or wander aimlessly on (a road, etc.); to ramble.
How do you use stravaig in a sentence?: And they do be stravaiging about always and not contented at all.
What part of speech is stravaig?: Stravaig can be a verb or a noun.
How do you pronounce stravaig?: Stravaig is pronounced /stɹəˈveɪɡ/ (UK).
What is the past tense of stravaig?: The past tense of stravaig is stravaiged.

Words near stravaig in the dictionary

Adapted from Wiktionary: stravaig (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.

Last updated: 2026-09-02

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