1 (of an action, a decision, a rule, etc.) not seeming to be based on a reason, system or plan and sometimes seeming unfair:
The choice of players for the team seemed completely arbitrary. * He makes unpredictable, arbitrary decisions.
2 (formal) using power without restriction and without considering other people:
the arbitrary powers of officials
arbitrarily adverb:
The leaders of the groups were chosen arbitrarily. * The political frontiers in Africa were often arbitrarily drawn up by the old colonial powers.
arbitrariness noun [U]:
Court officials were suspected of arbitrariness and personal bias.
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About this entry
This is a English–English dictionary entry.
Sourced from Main Dictionary in Lughet's collection.
This word also appears under other sources in Lughet's collection — see the list below.
Where does this definition of arbitrary come from?
This entry for arbitrary is sourced from Main Dictionary, one of the dictionaries and corpora merged into Lughet.
Is arbitrary a noun, verb, or something else?
In this entry, arbitrary is tagged as adjective.
Does arbitrary appear elsewhere on Lughet?
Yes — arbitrary appears under other sources or language pairs in Lughet's collection. See the list below.
What is Lughet?
Lughet is a free trilingual dictionary covering nearly five million entries across Uyghur, Chinese, and English, drawn from more than ten source dictionaries and corpora.
