ERRANT

[Dr. Goodword]

• errant •

Pronunciation: er- ênt • Hear it!

Part of Speech: Adjective

Meaning: 1. Complete, absolute, thoroughgoing, as an errant knave. 2. Wandering, vagrant, vagabond, as a knight errant.

Notes: Although I use the traditional spelling above in deference to the recent change in the meaning of today's Good Word, please feel free to spell it arrant. You might prefer to spell today's word errant in its old meaning (No. 2 above) and arrant in the newer. You may also place it after the noun it modifies in the older sense: a knight errant or a pastor errant, who wanders from church to church.

In Play: You will probably want to use this word in its most recent sense: "Griswold, the errant knave, embezzled money for years, planning to cruise the Caribbean in such errant luxury as would put a Saudi sheik to shame." It is such a lovely word, though, it is difficult to resist the temptation of using it in its now archaic sense (No. 2 above): "I watched the sunset through shimmering tufts of her hair, tossed occasionally by an errant evening breeze."
Word History: The two meanings of today's Good Word is the result of two different Latin verbs merging into one in French, whence English borrowed them. Latin errare "to err, make a mistake" and iterare "to journey, travel" both reduced to Old French errer "to err, travel, go astray". Errant is the present participle of errer. Latin iterare "to journey, travel" is a verb based on iter "journey, trip". We see it also in the English borrowing (re)iterate. The sense of "wander off (the straight and narrow), go astray" encouraged the two verbs to merge. However, the French noun erreur kept only the meaning of "error", which English borrowed. (We are happy that our errant Good Words reach Lew Jury and inspire him to suggest words of today's quality to us.)

[Slava]

And, for knights errant in serious error, see: Monty Python and the Holy Grail.

[Audiendus]

The sense of "wander off (the straight and narrow), go astray"

This (in its adjectival form) is a third distinct sense of "errant", and is actually the only one I have heard in modern usage. Sense 2, as you say, is archaic, and I have only ever heard "arrant" for sense 1.

So I would understand "pastor errant" in sense 2 (i.e. wandering pastor), and "errant pastor" in sense 3 (i.e. controversial or delinquent pastor). I would only use sense 1 to refer to a person who is already bad (e.g. arrant fool, charlatan, coward, villain).

[Perry]

Are we errant if we wander through the threads here? (And if so, in which sense?)