flyaway

alternative fly-away

1. not comparableDisposed to fly away; unrestrained; light and free.
2. not comparableFlighty; frivolous
3. not comparableSoft, light, unruly, and difficult to set into a style.

   [...] and Lorene mumbled thanks, and slid out of the booth again, a big boned, pretty girl with a tiny pearl glinting above her eye and flyaway streaked hair [...].

   2001, Joyce Carol Oates, Middle Age : A Romance (paperback), Fourth estate, page 231

plural flyaways · alternative fly-away

1. A stray hair that is difficult to style.

   Consequently, there is a swell of hair care regimens, including serums, gels, balms, creams and sprays promising moisture-rich curls, without frizz or flyaways.

   2007 January 18, Marcelle S. Fischler, “Taming Frizz and Setting Curls Free”, in New York Times

2. Anything that is difficult to capture or restrain.

   But Truth is such a flyaway, such a slyboots, so untransportable and unbarrelable a commodity, that it is as bad to catch as light.

   1838 July 24, Ralph Waldo Emerson, “Literary Ethics. An Oration Delivered before the Literary Societies of Dartmouth College, July 24, 1838”, in Nature, Addresses, and Lectures (Emerson’s Complete Works; I), Riverside edition, London: The Waverley Book Company, published 1883, →OCLC, page 166

3. gymnasticsA kind of dismount from bars that incorporates one or more flips or twists.
4. broadcastingA portable satellite television antenna.

   Unless the TV crew has its own flyaway, the locals can still defeat a story they couldn't prevent reporters from covering by cutting it off at the pass, when it is being birded through their facilities.

   1995, David D. Pearce, Wary Partners: Diplomats and the Media, page 43

5. A situation where an operator loses control of a drone.

   "But the Civil Aviation Authority is very worried about 'flyaway' - if someone has bought a GPS jammer on eBay because they don't want drones near their house, it can cause drones to get completely lost and shoot off in a random direction until they run out of battery.

   2025 July 23, Paul Clifton, “Air force: drones' developing railway role”, in RAIL, number 1040, page 29