Word of the Day

: March 30, 2024

haphazard

adjective hap-HAZZ-erd

What It Means

Something haphazard has no apparent plan, order, or direction.

// Considering the haphazard way you measured the ingredients, it's a wonder the cookies came out this good.

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haphazard in Context

"It felt like winter for the first time that year, and Theo remembered how much she preferred the dark, the secrecy, of the season. They walked single-file up against the haphazard stone wall, wary of cars that sped up the country lane. … An owl hooted somewhere close by and they stopped to listen, sitting on a section of broken wall." — Juno Dawson, The Shadow Cabinet, 2023

Did You Know?

The hap in haphazard comes from an English word that means "happening," as well as "chance or fortune." Hap, in turn, comes from the Old Norse word happ, meaning "good luck." Perhaps it's no accident that hazard also has its own connotations of chance and luck: while it now refers commonly to something that presents danger, at one time it referred to a dice game similar to craps. (The name ultimately comes from the Arabic word al-zahr, meaning "the die.") Haphazard first entered English as a noun meaning "chance" in the 16th century, and soon afterward was being used as an adjective to describe things with no apparent logic or order.