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.
• Because the shooting was arbitrary and up and down the street.
  — Meredith Deliso, ABC News, 16 May 2023
• And that arbitrary bit of division isn’t the end of it.
  — Andrew Van Dam, Washington Post, 11 Aug. 2023
• But the way in which many of them use these numbers is arbitrary.
  — Kaitlyn Tiffany, The Atlantic, 17 Jan. 2023
• 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 method is both somewhat arbitrary and hard to scale up.
  — Jeremy Kahn, Fortune, 8 Feb. 2022
• The record, whether carved in stone or bits of data, is arbitrary in the extreme.
  — Virginia Heffernan, WIRED, 20 Aug. 2019
• The judge is abusing the arbitrary and capricious standard.
  — Noah Feldman Bloomberg Opinion (tns), Star Tribune, 28 Jan. 2021
• To critics, the list is arbitrary, vague and amounts to picking winners and losers.
  — Tory Newmyer, Washington Post, 9 Mar. 2018
• The athletes call that arbitrary punishment for having dared to walk away from the team.
  — Vivienne Walt, Time, 8 July 2021
• Sickness is arbitrary and can befall any one of us at any time.
  — Alaska Dispatch News, 2 Aug. 2017
• That death can be arbitrary is part of the human condition.
  — The Economist, 14 Dec. 2017
• 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
• But this is a highly arbitrary process, and marginalized people can slip through the cracks.
  — Alvin Chang, Vox, 26 July 2018
• My son has a set biorhythm, and no arbitrary daylight saving law is going to shift it.
  — Rachel Meyer, chicagotribune.com, 22 Nov. 2019
• But limits like these seem arbitrary and open to gaming.
  — Marguerite Roza, Forbes, 17 Mar. 2021
• The heavy-handed and arbitrary way in which it was done in Shanghai backfired.
  — Robert Mahoney, CNN, 26 Apr. 2022
• But to travelers, the rules can seem arbitrary and unfair.
  — Washington Post, 31 Mar. 2021
• Key factors like what tree to plant, when to plant it, and where are not arbitrary decisions.
  — Dan Lambe, Treehugger, 13 Apr. 2023
• Both were arbitrary categories and different means to the same end.
  — Peter Richardson, The New Republic, 28 Jan. 2022
• The Founders did not mean for government to be fickle or arbitrary.
  — Matthew Continetti, National Review, 10 June 2023
• Australia is the almost arbitrary place where this savant of letters was born.
  — Ryu Spaeth, The New Republic, 4 May 2018
• They are created out of peer pressure based on an arbitrary date.
  — Ashley Stahl, Forbes, 9 Dec. 2021
• The world is strange and wonderful; good, bad, and sometimes arbitrary.
  — National Geographic, 14 Aug. 2016
• 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
• Is picking someone based on a star sign any more arbitrary than picking them based on a few photos?
  — Alexandra Jones, refinery29.com, 27 Jan. 2020
• But all the pictures are square, which makes their edges feel arbitrary, not integral.
  — Mark Jenkins, Washington Post, 4 Nov. 2022

Last Updated: 21 Apr 2024