Arbitrarily

How to spell arbitrarily

11 letters · 5 syllables

How to pronounce arbitrarily

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does arbitrarily mean?

1. adverbIn a way that is based on personal whim or random choice rather than on any reason, system, or rule.

Arbitrarily in a sentence

• The manager assigned the parking spaces arbitrarily, ignoring seniority altogether.

• The committee set the deadline arbitrarily, without consulting the teams involved.

Where does arbitrarily come from?

Language of origin: Latin

This word traces back to the Latin arbiter, which named a witness or judge, someone called in to settle a dispute and decide it by personal judgement rather than by fixed rule. From arbiter Latin formed the adjective arbitrarius, meaning 'depending on the will or discretion of a judge', and English took this in through French and Latin in the sixteenth century as 'arbitrary'. Because a judge's private decision could seem unpredictable or even high-handed, the meaning drifted toward 'based on whim rather than reason', which is the everyday sense today. The adverb 'arbitrarily' simply adds the -ily ending, and the same arbiter root still surfaces in 'arbitration' and 'arbiter' itself. The spelling trap lives in the unstressed middle, the -trar- run plus the -ily ending, where fluent writers often drop a letter or muddle the vowels.

How the word is built

• arbitr- (from Latin arbiter: judge, decider)
• -ary (adjective: relating to)
• -ily (adverb suffix)