arrant vs errand vs errant
Definitions
adjective
- without qualification; used informally as (often pejorative) intensifiers
Examples
Some lucky local with an open fire had determined the evening warranted a little extra cheer, more than the central heating could provide, and had lit a small blaze on his hearth.
Minister for Defence Robert Hill talks with an Australian Army captain and warrant officer at a Middle East base.
I boxed, swam, sailed, rode horses, lived in the open an arrantly healthful life, and passed life insurance examinations with flying colours.
Definitions
noun
- a short trip that is taken in the performance of a necessary task or mission
Examples
If he come to see me" (as it has always been reckoned a piece of neighbourly kindness to visit the sick) "he speaks vanity; that is, he pretends friendship, and that his errand is to mourn with me and to comfort me; he tells me he is very sorry to see me so much indisposed, and wishes me my health; but it is all flattery and falsehood.
Stealing away, (whence, I suppose, the ironical phrase of trusty Trojan to this day,) like a thief — pretendedly indeed at the command of the gods; but could that be, when the errand he went upon was to rob other princes, not only of their dominions, but of their lives? —
Seeking to be so is a fool 's errand.
Definitions
adjective
- uncontrolled motion that is irregular or unpredictable
- straying from the right course or from accepted standards
Examples
Lobefins today have dwindled to the lungfishes and the coelacanths ‘dwindled’ as ‘fish’, that is, but mightily expanded on land: we land vertebrates are aberrant lungfish.
He was a large, meaty, oily type of man — a kind of ambling, gelatinous formula of the male, with the usual sound commercial instincts of the Jew, but with an errant philosophy which led him to believe first one thing and then another so long as neither interfered definitely with his business.
He blocked errant pitches in the dirt, expertly framed borderline tosses, turning them into strikes and worked masterfully with pitchers.
