vagrance

vagrance

English

Noun

vagrance (uncountable)

1. (archaic) Vagrancy, wandering.
   • 1601, John Legat, printer to the University of Cambridge (publisher), Ease for Overseers of the Poore: Abstracted from the Statutes

     […] but as they have wavering and straying mindes, so they will have wandering and unstaid bodies, which will sooner be disposed to vagrance than activitie, to idlenesse than to worke.

   • 1801, Samuel Johnson, The Rambler

     Locke […] urged the necessity of a trade to men of all ranks and professions, that when the mind is weary with its proper task, it may be relaxed by a slighter attention to some mechanical operation; and that while the vital functions are resuscitated and awakened by vigorous motion, the understanding may be restrained from that vagrance and dissipation by which it relieves itself after a long intenseness of thought, unless some allurement be presented that may engage application without anxiety.

   • 1913, Carl Shurz (Frederic Bancroft editor), Speeches, Correspondence and Political Papers of Carl Schurz

     Here vagrance laws were enacted calculated to tie the colored laborer to his late owner by the most arbitrary legal obligations.