English▸ noun a person without a settled home or regular work who wanders from place to place and lives by asking for money or food.
▪ archaic a wanderer.
▪ Ornithology a bird that has strayed or been blown from its usual range or migratory route. Also called accidental:
most birders are hoping to find the wind-blown vagrants of migration.
▸ adjective [attributive] relating to or living the life of a vagrant:
vagrant beggars.
▪ moving from place to place; wandering:
vagrant whales.
▪ literary moving or behaving unpredictably; inconstant:
the vagrant heart of my mother.
– ORIGIN late Middle English: from Anglo-Norman French vagarant ‘wandering about’, from the verb vagrer.