random
/ˈrandəm
/adjective
1Made, done, or happening without method or conscious decision: apparently random violence...
- What is now required is to go beyond looking at what happened as a random event.
- We don't want a list of random facts that just happen to be true of all the languages that are spoken now.
- He becomes the victim of random violence, and is beaten to death by street thugs.
1.1 Statistics Governed by or involving equal chances for each item: a random sample of 100 households...
- The four conditions occurred in a random order and with equal probability within each block of trials.
- Results are based on statistically valid random samples of members and are rigorously audited.
- This has made the whole process of ensuring a random sample more difficult.
Synonyms
unsystematic, arbitrary, unmethodical, haphazard, unarranged, unplanned, undirected, casual, indiscriminate, non-specific, stray, erratic;
chance, accidental, hit-and-miss;
serendipitous, fortuitous, contingent, adventitious;
non-linear, entropic, fractal
rare aleatory, stochastic
1.2(Of masonry) with stones of irregular size and shape.York stone flags, laid in random sizes, were chosen for the paving to give a sense of quality and scale.
2 informal, often derogatory Unfamiliar or unspecified: are you going to take some random guy on Twitter’s word? we stumbled on another live band playing at a random bar...
- You can't trust the people you're expecting to guard the schools any more than you can a random person off the street.
- Perhaps their first response to a random phonecall shouldn't be a full-scale military intervention.
- He's not even a video game guy, he's just some random finance guy who occasionally offers incredibly ill-informed opinions about video games.
2.1 informal Odd, unusual, or unexpected: the class was hard but he was so random that it was always fun...
- I had a sudden craving for chicken… Wow that was random.
- He was in the hotel room next to us which was really random.
- The things they say and ask are so random.
noun informal
An unknown, unspecified, or odd person: I just sat down by myself and talked to some randoms some randoms in the crowd asked Ivan Ljubicic to take a photo for them unlike other fan mail from randoms, this was special...
- Click one to connect to other randoms with the same interest.
- Then immediately I got multiple 'friend requests' from randoms.
- Here's how you can tell if a color works on you: wear it all day long and if you get compliments from randoms, then you're set.
Phrases
at random
Origin
Middle English (in the sense 'impetuous headlong rush'): from Old French randon 'great speed', from randir 'gallop', from a Germanic root shared by rand2.
In early use random referred to an ‘impetuous headlong rush’. It comes from Old French randon ‘great speed’, from a Germanic root.