chaoticadj.

1688 R. Boyle Advt. Loss of Writings 2/2 These heaps of Fragments..seem to be more of a Chaotic Nature (if I may so speak).

1747 S. Johnson Plan Dict. 32 Translators, who..have formed a chaotic dialect of heterogeneous phrases.

1780 T. Jefferson Let. 10 Nov. in Papers (1951) IV. 111 The force called upon to oppose the Enemy is as yet in a most Chaotic State.

1837 T. B. Macaulay Ld. Bacon in Edinb. Rev. July 17 6 Opinions were still in a state of chaotic anarchy.

1875 E. Poste tr. Gaius Institutionum Iuris Civilis (ed. 2) i. 81 The rules..are at first sight chaotic and bewildering.

1938 W. Watson Miss Pettigrew lives for Day vi. 73 Her mind was whirling: her thoughts chaotic.

1968 Harper's Mag. Feb. 61 The noisy, ugly, chaotic, increasingly dangerous and ever-spreading mega-cities.

2016 Daily News (N.Y.) (Nexis) 28 Mar. 6 Footage from the chaotic scene showed a nightmarish stampede of people carrying injured children.

1690 E. Warren Geologia (new ed.) iii. 84 Yet on the first day, I say, there was Light in the Chaotic World, even on the very Waters of the Chaos.

1713 W. Derham Physico-theol. iii. ii. 67 At that time (whatever it was) when the Terraqueous Globe was in a chaotick State.

1774 J. Bryant New Syst. II. 259 Janus is by him supposed to be the chaotic deity.

1816 Weekly Entertainer 18 Nov. 939 Dark was the vast chaotic void 'Till, by his power divine, Order from wild confusion rose.

1875 B. Stewart & P. G. Tait Unseen Universe (ed. 2) ii. 65 The present solar system gradually condensed into its present state from a chaotic mass of nebulous material.

1958 Sewanee Rev. 66 421 We have sketched a picture of the evolution of the universe, starting with the original chaotic state.

2006 Jrnl. Black Stud. 36 962 Ancient Egyptian cosmology claims that a powerful, intelligent being evolves through a process of becoming out of an original chaotic matter.

1974 Science 15 Nov. 646/2 Episodes of apparently chaotic behavior.

1990 Times 9 Aug. 13/5 One of the tasks facing students of complex chaotic systems, meteorological or social, is to investigate fully the range of predictability in each case.

2004 K. Nakamura & T. Harayama Quantum Chaos & Quantum Dots i. 2 The dynamics of the ball is chaotic.

2011 R. Kautz Chaos xiv. 234 We can see for the first time two actions, often described as stretching and folding, that are common to all chaotic systems.

1981 J. E. Holmes Fantasy Role Playing Games vi. 99 Even more complicated is the intersecting bridge between ‘lawful’ and ‘chaotic’. Thus, it is possible to be ‘lawful good’ or ‘lawful evil’ or ‘chaotic good’.

1989 Dragon Nov. 64/1 Chaotic evil is not the ultimate evil.

2006 Believer Sept. 7/3 D&D offers its players a moral clarity rarely found in the real world; your character has an alignment; he or she can be good or evil, lawful or chaotic.

1977 J. Marsden in Turbulence Seminar, Berkeley 1976/77 8 In any specific turbulent flow we don't know what the chaotic attractor might look like, or how one might form.

1994 College Math. Jrnl. 25 74 Typically, a chaotic system will settle into a region of its state space..called a chaotic attractor.

2014 M. Grinfeld Math. Tools Physicists (ed. 2) xi. 405 Windows of periodic behaviour like this are typical in chaotic attractors of smooth dynamical systems.