Both Uses of
vagrant
in
Great Expectations
- Do you find any gypsies, now, or tramps, or vagrants of any sort, out there?†
p. 79.6 *vagrants = people who are poor and have no regular home or job
- I had come out of Kingston Jail last on a vagrancy committal†
p. 368.1
Definitions:
-
(1)
(vagrant) someone who is poor and has no regular home or job
-
(2)
(meaning too rare to warrant focus) meaning too rare to warrant focus:
Less commonly, and especially long ago, you may see vagrant used to emphasize that a poor person wanders from place to place. Even more rarely, it can describe an animal as being in a place it usually is not, or to describe anything that varies or seems random such as the seeming haphazard direction in which a certain weed spreads, or the fleeting quality of something smelled for only an instant.