[f. STRAY a. or v. + -LING1.

1

  Cf. changeling, wildling. The word coincides formally with a possible dim. of STRAY sb., but in the quots. it has not the dim. sense.]

2

  A stray thing or person.

3

1838.  Lytton, Leila, III. i. 31. It may win a new strayling to the Immortal Fold.

4

1881.  G. Allen, in Cornhill Mag., June, 705. Sometimes garden kinds, escaped from cultivation … sometimes American straylings.

5

1904.  Blackw. Mag., Jan., 156/1. We owe a greater debt to our own countrymen than to the straylings from Russia.

6