[f. STRAND sb.1 Cf. Du., G. stranden, Da. strande, Sw., Icel. stranda, intr. to run aground.]
1. trans. To drive or force aground on a shore, esp. on the sen-shore; also rarely of a river, to leave aground (by the ebbing of the tide).
1621. in Foster, Eng. Factories India (1906), 264. The last yeare … all taken or stranded by the Portugall.
1666. Dryden, Ann. Mirab., ccli. As those who live by Shores with joy behold Some wealthy Vessel split or stranded nigh.
1680. Lond. Gaz., No. 1508/1. The Adventure, and Bristol … are come up so close with him, that we doubt not but they will either take or strand him.
1697. Dryden, Virg. Georg., III. 809. Mighty Phocæ, never seen before In shallow Streams, are stranded on the Shore.
1723. De Foe, Col. Jack (1840), 297. To run the ship on shore to save our lives and so, stranding our vessel, spoil both sloop and cargo.
1777. Cook, Voy. S. Pole, III. xi. 158. They likewise asserted that neither she, nor any other ship, had been stranded on the coast.
1837. Carlyle, Fr. Rev., III. V. iii. The corpses of the first were flung into the Rhone, but the Rhone stranded some.
1843. Bethune, Scott. Peasant’s Fire-side, 117. The vessel was stranded in a gale during the night, on the west coast of England.
2. transf. and fig. Chiefly in passive.
1837. Carlyle, Fr. Rev., II. VI. v. Your National Assembly, like a ship waterlogged, helmless, lies tumbling;… and waits where the waves of chance may please to strand it.
1850. Blackie, Æschylus, II. 64. Thy pride will strand thee on a worser woe.
1860. Tyndall, Glac., II. viii. 264. When a glacier diminishes in size it leaves its lateral moraines stranded on the flanks of the valleys.
1874. Ruskin, Fors Clav., IV. xxxvii. 3. I am left utterly stranded and alone in life and thought.
1876. Miss Braddon, J. Haggard’s Dau., I. 5. A man of superior mind, stranded for life in such a place as Combhaven, might naturally think himself a king.
1880. Goldw. Smith, Cowper, ii. 22. At thirty-five he was stranded and desolate.
1885. A. Seth, Scott. Philos., ii. 68. When he [Hume] had given free scope to his logical acuteness, he stranded himself equally with his masters on the consequences he arrived at.
3. intr. To run aground.
1687. A. Lovell, trans. Thevenot’s Trav., I. 17. It blowing so fresh, and we having all our Sails abroad, the Ship in all probability should have stranded.
1705. trans. Bosman’s Guinea, 418. They belong’d to a small French Pyrate, which stranded there about ten Days before.
1796. Morse, Amer. Geog., II. 68. Lost 6 or 7 ships of the line, two by catching fire … and the others by stranding on the sandbanks.
1864. Tennyson, Enoch Arden, 548. Half the night, Buoy’d upon floating tackle and broken spars, These drifted, stranding on an isle at morn.
1887. Pall Mall Gaz., 17 Feb., 7/2. The Guion Line steamer Wisconsin stranded yesterday during a fog on the outer bar,… and remained fast.
fig. 1901. Munsey’s Mag. (U.S.), XXV. 668/1. An old fellow in Mariposa County, California, who stranded there when the current of the forty niners ebbed out of the hills.
1908. H. Wales, Old Allegiance, ix. 148. So I stranded in a remarkable quandary.
Hence Stranding vbl. sb. and ppl. a.
1817. W. Selwyn, Law Nisi Prius (ed. 4), II. 882. To constitute a stranding it is essential that the vessel should be stationary; the striking on a rock where the vessel remains for a minute and a half only, is not a stranding, though she thereby receives an injury, which eventually proves fatal.
1884. Sir T. Brassey, in 19th Cent., March, 445. Careless shipmasters and mates are responsible for many collisions and strandings.
1904. H. G. Wells, Food of Gods, II. ii. 190. Big frogs, bigger trout and stranding carp.
