vagary

/vəˈɡɛɚ.i/

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. By surface analysis, Latin vag(us) + -ary.

vagary means an erratic, unpredictable occurrence or action. Lexicurio rates it Rare gem — a strength score of 81 out of 100.

Why this word is great

VAGARY — [Noun] An erratic, unpredictable, or capricious action, occurrence, or idea. From the Latin vagārī ("to wander"), from vagus ("wandering"). Unlike "caprice," which springs from a sudden internal whim, or "fluctuation," which implies a measurable oscillation between known states, a vagary is an inexplicable, external swerve in the world's own logic. It is the freak hailstorm that shreds the May blossoms, the rogue wave on a calm sea, or the single, unbidden memory that reconstitutes an entire afternoon. The world is less a mechanism than a wanderer, prone to its own fits of absent-mindedness.

noun

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 press”
Something vague.“to speak in vagaries”
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.”