One who departs from the direct or proper course, or from the company to which they belong.
2021 May 28, Sam Roberts, “Faye Schulman Dies; Fought Nazis With a Rifle and a Camera”, in The New York Times[1], →ISSN:
She recounted her life in pre-World War II Eastern Europe and how a ragtag band of Red Army stragglers, escaped prisoners of war and Jewish and gentile Resistance fighters — including some women — harassed the Germans behind the Wehrmacht’s front lines in the forests and swamps of what is now Belarus.
One who falls behind the rest, for example in a race.
Part or all of this entry has been imported from the 1913 edition of Webster’s Dictionary, which is now free of copyright and hence in the public domain. The imported definitions may be significantly out of date, and any more recent senses may be completely missing. (See the entry for “straggler”, in Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, Springfield, Mass.: G. & C. Merriam, 1913, →OCLC.)