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.
• But the way in which many of them use these numbers is arbitrary.
  — Kaitlyn Tiffany, The Atlantic, 17 Jan. 2023
• And that method is both somewhat arbitrary and hard to scale up.
  — Jeremy Kahn, Fortune, 8 Feb. 2022
• Sickness is arbitrary and can befall any one of us at any time.
  — Alaska Dispatch News, 2 Aug. 2017
• When do courts tend to find that an agency action is arbitrary?
  — Christina Gatti, NPR, 8 Feb. 2025
• The assembling of the team is arbitrary, as are their skill sets.
  — Daniel Fienberg, HollywoodReporter, 30 Apr. 2026
• Because the shooting was arbitrary and up and down the street.
  — Meredith Deliso, ABC News, 16 May 2023
• The record, whether carved in stone or bits of data, is arbitrary in the extreme.
  — Virginia Heffernan, WIRED, 20 Aug. 2019
• There was something arbitrary about the way this term and its synonyms were bandied about.
  — Literary Hub, 5 Nov. 2025
• Virtue, even when arbitrary and pointless, has rewards of its own.
  — Meghan O'Gieblyn, WIRED, 29 Apr. 2024
• When selecting art, don't get caught up in arbitrary rules.
  — Tessa Cooper, The Spruce, 6 Feb. 2026
• Why kill an innocent man for crossing an arbitrary line in the sand?
  — Literary Hub, 11 June 2026
• In some ways, are triple doubles an arbitrary achievement?
  — Shane Young, Forbes.com, 8 Aug. 2025
• My son has a set biorhythm, and no arbitrary daylight saving law is going to shift it.
  — Rachel Meyer, chicagotribune.com, 22 Nov. 2019
• The cost of this arbitrary divide is measured in more than legal fees.
  — Harry Bubbins, San Diego Union-Tribune, 23 Oct. 2025
• This is a standard practice, but just to hold this arbitrary amount of money?
  — Nick Sullivan, The Arizona Republic, 10 Apr. 2024
• Yet many experts agree that number is arbitrary.
  — Veronique Greenwood, Time, 21 Oct. 2025
• Key factors like what tree to plant, when to plant it, and where are not arbitrary decisions.
  — Dan Lambe, Treehugger, 13 Apr. 2023
• The less the professor can offer, the more arbitrary the grade can seem.
  — Michael McCann, Sportico.com, 18 Nov. 2025
• Each of the solid rounds is 82 tons, which is not an arbitrary number.
  — Mark Jenkins, Washington Post, 1 July 2022
• To critics, the list is arbitrary, vague and amounts to picking winners and losers.
  — Tory Newmyer, Washington Post, 9 Mar. 2018
• But all the pictures are square, which makes their edges feel arbitrary, not integral.
  — Mark Jenkins, Washington Post, 4 Nov. 2022
• Compete on those grounds and not by way of arbitrary gatekeeping.
  — Mitch Wallace, Forbes.com, 31 Aug. 2025
• That threshold is not arbitrary.
  — Nicole Sganga, CBS News, 23 Apr. 2026
• These thresholds are not arbitrary.
  — Michael Gianaris, New York Daily News, 1 Feb. 2026
• One is that $1 billion is a nice, round number but a rather arbitrary standard.
  — Callum Borchers, Washington Post, 30 Jan. 2018
• And not simply the tariff policies, but the arbitrary on and off nature of them.
  — Erik Sherman, Forbes.com, 13 June 2026
• Nobody knew how to extend their techniques to arbitrary weights.
  — Ben Brubaker, Quanta Magazine, 6 Aug. 2025