0 to move or spread untidily and in small numbers or amounts:
1 to move alone or in small groups slowly and usually separated in distance or time from those who went earlier:
We cannot afford to let this small island become a mass of straggling villages, one adjacent to the other.
The principal lambing period should be over in six weeks but, with any flock, it will straggle a bit.
It is much better that they should do that rather than straggle back in unregulated mass formation.
To suggest that that is straggling and ribbon development is going a little far.
Our rearguard straggles out into conditions which are crueller than barbarism.
It is this combination of an appearance of a straggling village and monotony of building which produces this not altogether satisfactory appearance.
There unexpectedly hove in sight a very large and straggling fleet.
It will also lead and is already leading to a straggle of refugees from the poor countries to the rich.
