different between hotfoot vs straggle

English

Etymology

From Middle English hot-fot, hot fot, equivalent to hot +? foot.

Noun

hotfoot (plural hotfoots)

1. (US) The prank of secretly inserting a match between the sole and upper of a victim's shoe and then lighting it.

Adjective

hotfoot

1. Moving with haste or zeal.
   • 1938, Elwyn Brooks White, The Fox of Peapack, and Other Poems (page 137)

     Half the populace are idle, / Half are busy in a room; / All are gravebound from the cradle, / All are hotfoot for their doom.

Adverb

hotfoot

1. (Britain) hastily; without delay.

Translations

Verb

hotfoot (third-person singular simple present hotfoots, present participle hotfooting, simple past and past participle hotfooted)

1. (transitive) To run (a distance).
   • 2007, R.C. Harvey, Meanwhile...

     He hotfooted the four-and-a-half blocks across town to the New York Public Library on Fifth Avenue and checked out the books Patterson had mentioned—and everything else about China he could quickly think of.

   • 2010, Eric Hammel, Coral and Blood: The U.S. Marine Corps’ Pacific Campaign (page 55)

     The Ford was shot up heavily, so Larkin hotfooted the last mile to Ewa. Once there, he took cover beneath a truck as unchallenged Zeros strafed the neatly parked MAG-21 aircraft and the base facilities.

Derived terms

• hotfoot it
• hotfoot spell

Translations

Anagrams

• foothot

English

Etymology

From Middle English straglen, of uncertain origin.

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /?st?æ?l?/
• Rhymes: -æ??l
• Hyphenation: strag?gle

Verb

straggle (third-person singular simple present straggles, present participle straggling, simple past and past participle straggled)

1. To stray from the road, course or line of march.

   He straggled away from the crowd and went off on his own.

2. To wander about; ramble.
3. To spread at irregular intervals.
4. To escape or stretch beyond proper limits, as the branches of a plant; to spread widely apart; to shoot too far or widely in growth.

   • Trim off the small, superfluous branches on each side of the hedge that straggle too far out.

5. To be dispersed or separated; to occur at intervals.
   • They came between Scylla and Charybdis and the straggling rocks.

Derived terms

• (noun) straggler
• (adverb) stragglingly

Translations

Noun

straggle (plural straggles)

1. An irregular, spread-out group.
2. An outlier; something that has strayed beyond the normal limits.
   • 1858 Thomas Carlyle, History of Friedrich II of Prussia

     Nevertheless there is a straggle of pungent sense in it, — like the outskirts of lightning, seen in that dismally wet weather, which the Royal Party had.