WAIF • E-FREE TRANSLATION.COM • Definition of Waif

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noun

Waif n.

(Eng. Law.) Goods found of which the owner is not known; originally, such goods as a pursued thief threw away to prevent being apprehended, which belonged to the king unless the owner made pursuit of the felon, took him, and brought him to justice.

Hence, anything found, or without an owner; that which comes along, as it were, by chance. "Rolling in his mind old waifs of rhyme."

A wanderer; a castaway; a stray; a homeless child. "A waif Desirous to return, and not received."

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Etymology of 'Waif'

Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48

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"Waif" Quotes from Famous Books

... have heard of "a Manuscript found in a Bottle," But here is a waif with romance yet more fraught: A newly-found treatise by old ARISTOTLE Is flotsam indeed from the Ocean of Thought. Oh, happy discoverer, lucky Museum! Not this time the foreigner scores off JOHN BULL. Teuton pundits would lift, for ...

— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100., Jan. 31, 1891 • Various

... out of the party he supported those of Registrar to the Court of Chancery in the Island of Barbadoes, a sinecure done by deputy, Surveyor of the Crown Lands, and Paymaster to the Board of Works. The wits of White's added the title of 'Receiver-General of Waif and Stray Jokes.' It is said that his hostility to Sheridan arose from the latter having lost him the office in the Works in 1782, when Burke's Bill for reducing the Civil List came into operation; but this is not ...

— The Wits and Beaux of Society - Volume 2 • Grace & Philip Wharton

... beating that had been added to five days in the dungeon and eighty hours in the jacket, oppressed by the calamity of human fate, apprehensive of what was to happen to me from what I had seen happen to the others—I, a wavering waif of a human man and an erstwhile professor of agronomy in a quiet college town, I hesitated to accept ...

— The Jacket (The Star-Rover) • Jack London

... was like a boy shivering at the edge of the bank, and afraid to plunge in; then another comes behind him and pushes him into the water, and he strikes out, and finds that it is not as cold as he expected, and forthwith enjoys it. I have cut loose from the past. I have become a rover and a waif, and I feel as lighthearted as ...

— No Surrender! - A Tale of the Rising in La Vendee • G. A. Henty

... right have you, you fool, to hope for that, When every mother's son is privileged To jerk the battle-chariot's reins I hold? Think you that fortune will eternally Award a crown to disobedience? I do not like a bastard victory, The gutter-waif of chance; the law, look you, My crown's progenitor, I will uphold, For she shall ...

— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. IV • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke

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