ARBITRARILY

Pronunciation (US):

(GB):

IPA (US):

 Dictionary entry overview: What does arbitrarily mean? 

• ARBITRARILY (adverb)
  The adverb ARBITRARILY has 1 sense:

1. in a random manner

  Familiarity information: ARBITRARILY used as an adverb is very rare.

 Dictionary entry details 

• ARBITRARILY (adverb)

Sense 1

Meaning:

In a random manner

Synonyms:

arbitrarily; at random; every which way; haphazardly; indiscriminately; randomly; willy-nilly

Context example:

bullets were fired into the crowd at random

 Context examples 

The High Mobility Group (HMG) proteins were originally isolated from mammalian cells, named according to their electrophoretic mobility in polyacrylamide gels, and were arbitrarily classed as a specific type of non-histone proteins based on the observation that they are ubiquitous to mammalian cells, that they share certain physical properties, and that they are associated with isolated chromatin.

(Canonical HMG Protein, NCI Thesaurus)

The hypothesis was that study participants’ memory-based assumptions about color — oranges are orange, strawberries are red — would subtly influence color selection under LPS lighting, with arbitrarily colored objects such as Legos serving as the control.

(Rosy health and sickly green: color associations play robust role in reading faces, National Institutes of Health)