Vagary
noun ·Moderate ·College level
Definitions
- 1 An erratic, unpredictable occurrence or action.
"It now turns out that the Pitch Lake, like most other things, owes its appearance on the surface to no convulsion or vagary at all, but to a most slow, orderly, and respectable process of nature, by which buried vegetable matter, which would have become peat, and finally brown coal, in a temperate climate, becomes, under the hot tropic soil, asphalt and oil, continually oozing up beneath the pressure of the strata above it."
- 2 an unexpected and inexplicable change in something (in a situation or a person's behavior, etc.) wordnet
- 3 Something vague.
"to speak in vagaries"
- 4 An impulsive or illogical desire; a caprice or whim.
"And then came the day when my socialism grew respectable,—still a vagary of youth, it was held, but romantically respectable."
Example
More examples"Your impertinent attempts at national self-humilitiation have the vagary of a demented maniac, provide you with no condescension but accumulate contempt in the eyes of others and your total worthlessness is congruentially equivallent to your repugnantly low grammatic skills."
Etymology
From Italian vagare (“wander”) and/or its source Latin vagārī (“to wander”), from Latin vagus (“wandering”). Later apparently reinterpreted in English as vague + -ery but without changing the spelling.
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Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.