Word of the Day

Word of the Day
aleatory \EY-lee-uh-tawr-ee, -tohr-ee, AL-ee-\,
adjective:
1. of or pertaining to accidental causes; of luck or chance; unpredictable: an aleatory element.
2. Law. depending on a contingent event: an aleatory contract.
3. Music. employing the element of chance in the choice of tones, rests, durations, rhythms, dynamics, etc.

...it was not a matter of reduction at all, but—perversely—of expansion, the aleatory flutter of uncontrolled, metastatic growth…
-- David Foster Wallace, "Infinite Jest," 1996

[Man] is supposed to love happiness; it is my contention that he rather loves excitement. Danger, enterprise, hope, the novel, the aleatory, are dearer to man than regular meals.
-- Robert Louis Stevenson, "The Day After To-morrow," 1866

Hailing from the Latin word meaning "the dice" or "chance" alea, aleatory first surfaced in English in the late seventeenth century.

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