Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • adjective Roving, especially in search of adventure.
  • adjective Failing to adhere to guidelines or moral standards.
  • adjective Moving from the proper course or established limits.
  • adjective Aimless or irregular in motion.
  • adjective Missing an intended target or recipient.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • Wandering; roving; rambling: applied particularly to knights (knights errant) of the middle ages, who are represented as wandering about to seek adventures and display their heroism and generosity.
  • Deviating; straying from the straight, true, or right course; erring.
  • In zoology, free; not fixed; locomotory; specifically, pertaining to the Errantia; not tubicolous: as, the errant annelids.
  • Notorious; manifest: in this sense now spelled only arrant. See arrant, 2.
  • noun A knight errant.
  • Itinerant.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • adjective Wandering; deviating from an appointed course, or from a direct path; roving.
  • adjective Notorious; notoriously bad; downright; arrant.
  • adjective (Eng. Law) Journeying; itinerant; -- formerly applied to judges who went on circuit and to bailiffs at large.
  • noun obsolete One who wanders about.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • adjective straying from the proper course or standard, or outside established limits
  • adjective prone to making errors
  • adjective proscribed utter, complete (negative); arrant

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • adjective uncontrolled motion that is irregular or unpredictable
  • adjective straying from the right course or from accepted standards

Etymologies

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

[Middle English erraunt, from Anglo-Norman, partly from Old French errer, to travel about (from Vulgar Latin *iterāre, from Latin iter, journey; see ei- in Indo-European roots) and partly from Old French errer, to err; see err.]

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Examples

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  • "Ours is a privileged moment: never before has it been so easy to gain access to the errant musings, rapid-fire opinions, and random proclivity-ies of venture capitalists and others we enrich."

    Source: How Silicon Valley’s Workplace Culture Produced James Damore’s Google Memo

    January 22, 2018