How to Use arbitrary in a Sentence

arbitrary

adjective

• An arbitrary number has been assigned to each district.
• Although arbitrary arrests are illegal, they continue to occur in many parts of the country.
• I don't know why I chose that one; it was a completely arbitrary decision.
• So much of the design here seems arbitrary, an attempt to deflect from the fact that there’s just not actually all that much going on.
  — Eva Hagberg, Curbed, 26 Oct. 2021
• All this cross-country zigzagging, which might have once felt arbitrary and rootless, has come to seem ever more purposeful and even political with time.
  — Justin Chang, The New Yorker, 11 Oct. 2024
• Its rolling sound off the tongue? Ascribing arbitrary but absolute value to words and letters came to me naturally.
  — Anna Shechtman, The New Yorker, 20 Dec. 2021
• He has been accused by human rights groups of involvement in torture and arbitrary detentions in the UAE.
  — NBC News, 25 Nov. 2021
• He has been accused by human-rights groups of involvement in torture and arbitrary detentions in the UAE.
  — Arkansas Online, 26 Nov. 2021
• Every year of the 1970s another state would disappoint us as the arbitrary timeline placed by congress inched closer.
  — Lisa Ann Walter, Glamour, 10 Oct. 2024
• Some who did not suffer physical abuse were victimized by arbitrary detentions or opaque criminal proceedings, the group reported.
  — Washington Post, 19 Oct. 2021
• Roberts suggested the fetal viability line was arbitrary and need not be considered part of Roe's essential holding.
  — Joan Biskupic, CNN, 2 Dec. 2021
• The title, like so much else in the book, seems arbitrary.
  — Paul Elie, The New Yorker, 19 Aug. 2019
• Of course, your choice doesn’t have to be so arbitrary.
  — Alisha McDarris, Popular Science, 13 Jan. 2020
• And that arbitrary bit of division isn’t the end of it.
  — Andrew Van Dam, Washington Post, 11 Aug. 2023
• Because the shooting was arbitrary and up and down the street.
  — Meredith Deliso, ABC News, 16 May 2023
• But the way in which many of them use these numbers is arbitrary.
  — Kaitlyn Tiffany, The Atlantic, 17 Jan. 2023
• The record, whether carved in stone or bits of data, is arbitrary in the extreme.
  — Virginia Heffernan, WIRED, 20 Aug. 2019
• Here's what else gives me pause: The meal plan is arbitrary: Just look at the portion sizes.
  — Jaclyn London, Ms, Rd, Cdn, Good Housekeeping, 11 Dec. 2018
• The $15 charge was set, not for what people could pay, but for the need to raise the arbitrary $1 billion goal.
  — Lucius Riccio, New York Daily News, 9 June 2024
• And that method is both somewhat arbitrary and hard to scale up.
  — Jeremy Kahn, Fortune, 8 Feb. 2022
• That was the way to get through grief: make each moment hard with arbitrary want, then hop on them like rocks to get across the day.
  — Kate Osana Simonian, chicagotribune.com, 10 June 2017
• To critics, the list is arbitrary, vague and amounts to picking winners and losers.
  — Tory Newmyer, Washington Post, 9 Mar. 2018
• Each of the solid rounds is 82 tons, which is not an arbitrary number.
  — Mark Jenkins, Washington Post, 1 July 2022
• The heavy-handed and arbitrary way in which it was done in Shanghai backfired.
  — Robert Mahoney, CNN, 26 Apr. 2022
• But this is a highly arbitrary process, and marginalized people can slip through the cracks.
  — Alvin Chang, Vox, 26 July 2018
• The athletes call that arbitrary punishment for having dared to walk away from the team.
  — Vivienne Walt, Time, 8 July 2021
• Key factors like what tree to plant, when to plant it, and where are not arbitrary decisions.
  — Dan Lambe, Treehugger, 13 Apr. 2023
• This is a standard practice, but just to hold this arbitrary amount of money?
  — Nick Sullivan, The Arizona Republic, 10 Apr. 2024
• The judge is abusing the arbitrary and capricious standard.
  — Noah Feldman Bloomberg Opinion (tns), Star Tribune, 28 Jan. 2021
• My son has a set biorhythm, and no arbitrary daylight saving law is going to shift it.
  — Rachel Meyer, chicagotribune.com, 22 Nov. 2019

Last Updated: 16 Nov 2024