The stranger is a person who stays but retains the potential to wander away.

Evidence

The stranger is thus being discussed here, not in the sense often touched upon in the past, as the wanderer who comes today and goes tomorrow, but rather as the person who comes today and stays tomorrow. He is, so to speak, the potential wanderer: although he has not moved on, he has not quite overcome the freedom of coming and going. — Georg Simmel, The Sociology of Georg Simmel, 9541

Categorization

• DEFINE: Precisely defines the stranger against the wanderer — the key concept here.