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.
  • 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 arbitrary bit of division isn’t the end of it.
    Andrew Van Dam, Washington Post, 11 Aug. 2023
  • Because the shooting was arbitrary and up and down the street.
    Meredith Deliso, ABC News, 16 May 2023
  • But the way in which many of them use these numbers is arbitrary.
    Kaitlyn Tiffany, The Atlantic, 17 Jan. 2023
  • The record, whether carved in stone or bits of data, is arbitrary in the extreme.
    Virginia Heffernan, WIRED, 20 Aug. 2019
  • 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
  • The $15 charge was set, not for what people could pay, but for the need to raise the arbitrary $1 billion goal.
    Lucius Riccio, New York Daily News, 9 June 2024
  • And that method is both somewhat arbitrary and hard to scale up.
    Jeremy Kahn, Fortune, 8 Feb. 2022
  • 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
  • To critics, the list is arbitrary, vague and amounts to picking winners and losers.
    Tory Newmyer, Washington Post, 9 Mar. 2018
  • Each of the solid rounds is 82 tons, which is not an arbitrary number.
    Mark Jenkins, Washington Post, 1 July 2022
  • The heavy-handed and arbitrary way in which it was done in Shanghai backfired.
    Robert Mahoney, CNN, 26 Apr. 2022
  • But this is a highly arbitrary process, and marginalized people can slip through the cracks.
    Alvin Chang, Vox, 26 July 2018
  • The athletes call that arbitrary punishment for having dared to walk away from the team.
    Vivienne Walt, Time, 8 July 2021
  • Key factors like what tree to plant, when to plant it, and where are not arbitrary decisions.
    Dan Lambe, Treehugger, 13 Apr. 2023
  • This is a standard practice, but just to hold this arbitrary amount of money?
    Nick Sullivan, The Arizona Republic, 10 Apr. 2024
  • The judge is abusing the arbitrary and capricious standard.
    Noah Feldman Bloomberg Opinion (tns), Star Tribune, 28 Jan. 2021
  • My son has a set biorhythm, and no arbitrary daylight saving law is going to shift it.
    Rachel Meyer, chicagotribune.com, 22 Nov. 2019
  • Williams is known to wear outfits on the court that highlight her personal style while still abiding by the arbitrary rules of the court.
    Essence Fashion News, Essence, 17 Nov. 2022
  • Those thresholds are arbitrary, Ferris and Porter said, and far too deep.
    Ian James, The Arizona Republic, 13 May 2021
  • Sickness is arbitrary and can befall any one of us at any time.
    Alaska Dispatch News, 2 Aug. 2017
  • The world is strange and wonderful; good, bad, and sometimes arbitrary.
    National Geographic, 14 Aug. 2016
  • The Founders did not mean for government to be fickle or arbitrary.
    Matthew Continetti, National Review, 10 June 2023
  • In the end, the winners are arbitrary and the acceptance speeches repetitiveut the looks?
    Danielle Sinay, Glamour, 8 Jan. 2024
  • The Greeks didn’t impose arbitrary rules just to make math more challenging.
    Jack Murtagh, Scientific American, 12 Sep. 2024
  • Across the county, there were arbitrary arrests of Republican and Progressive poll watchers.
    Sasha Issenberg, Smithsonian Magazine, 5 Sep. 2024

Some of these examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'arbitrary.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.

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