How To Use Arbitrary In A Sentence

The basis of its case appears quite arbitrary and rests on contentious historical documentation. Times, Sunday Times
A belief in it is not only not naïve; it is the essential precondition for civilized society, and our best defense against the arbitrary use of power.
The whole Valentines racket is arbitrary and false. Let me count the ways « Write Anything
But hey, I guess if we are operating under the assumption that soccer fans revel in unfairness at the hands of a central, arbitrary power, they they will probably love this change. The Volokh Conspiracy » How Jonathan Adler Gets It Wrong, and Soccer Gets It Right:
The regular intake of three or more analgesic tablets daily or narcotics or ergotamine on more than two days a week are suggested arbitrary limits.

They'd also make a few arbitrary, unreviewed, undiscussed decisions about other stuff they'd keep.
And I should loathe for us to founder on so capricious and arbitrary a matter as a technical glitch. Times, Sunday Times
The punishment in this instance is not arbitrary; it bears some relation to the punishable behavior.
Haraway's juxtaposition of the words ‘fiction’ and ‘reality’ illustrates the arbitrary nature of these and other binaries in Western society.
Your Honour, from my perspective I am trying to understand the arbitrary and capricious argument that my learned friends are putting forward.
This effectively enables the Home Office to make arbitrary decisions, deporting people as they see fit, without any independent inquiry.
Rebuilding costs might be calculated on a rule of thumb basis but the assumptions would be relatively arbitrary.
Finding a seemingly arbitrary number in the middle of a 40 line block of code is a maintenance nightmare.
Why couldn't people see that tradition, while rather arbitrary, was the only fair way to do things?
Greek name perpetuated by the people and referring to this covering of hoary pines -- a name which the cartographers, arbitrary and ignorant as they often are, have unconsciously disguised. Old Calabria
The development is contained in a report by the Obama administration, International Strategy for Cyberspace, in which the US for the first time sets out a strategy for dealing with the expansion of the internet and what it describes as "arbitrary and malicious disruption". US calls on its Nato partners to help resist cyber-attacks
This list very well illustrates the arbitrary choice of saints to be commemorated, which is observable in most early calendars. The Catholic Encyclopedia, Volume 3: Brownson-Clairvaux
Do what he will, let God take order with it; this leadeth kings to atheism, let them do what they please, and to take God in their own hand: in regard of laws, they teach nothing to kings but tyranny: and in regard of government, they teach a king to take an arbitrary power to himself, to do what he pleaseth without controlment. The Covenants And The Covenanters Covenants, Sermons, and Documents of the Covenanted Reformation
In others there is a recurring temptation to rule by arbitrary edict, inflationary financing, confiscatory policies and big government. Times, Sunday Times
His challenge to Doerflinger was to defend, in a nonarbitrary way and without reference to religious principles, the notion that society should recognize moral value and legal rights at any particular point along that line. The Democrats and the Abortion Wars
And maybe, just maybe, that awareness could coalesce into a market force that rewards openness and accountability, and punishes arbitrary, high-handed behaviour.
Its usefulness will often justify a path which in theory may appear quite arbitrary or badly traced. The Education of a Gardener
It also tended to limit the exercise of arbitrary power by the emperor himself. World History: Patterns of Change and Continuity
It is utterly false and cruelly arbitrary to put all the play and learning into childhood, all the work into middle age, and all the regrets into old age. Margaret Mead
The citizens, clearly, are the distributors of bodily nourishment, circulating their life-giving vigor even to the heart and foreclosing the possibility of that organ exercising arbitrary rule over the body.
When punishment comes - such is the arbitrary nature of things - it is often for the wrong offence. Times, Sunday Times
Despite the rather arbitrary nature of the latter requirement, it makes perfect sense. Times, Sunday Times
For arbitrary large initial data, if it is away from vacuum, the smooth solutions to the initial value problem are uniformly (namely, independent of time) away from vacuum.
In the absence of any clear division between administrative and judicial functions, even the humblest official enjoyed arbitrary power.
The passion that underlay her opinions - which could seem arbitrary at times, and were often as unpredictable as her temperament - was doubtless genuine.
How you can tell whether a binary number of arbitrary size is divisible by 10 without looking at the whole number?
The audiences before whom _The Revenge_ was produced evidently showed themselves ill-affected towards such a medley of purely fictitious creations, and of historical personages and incidents, treated in the most arbitrary fashion. Bussy D'Ambois and The Revenge of Bussy D'Ambois
The inputs employed for simulation are somewhat arbitrary, but they reflect underlying realities.
This jumbled exercise by Bulareyaung Pagarlava amounts to a shapeless sampler of miscellaneous moods and shticks, from the cloyingly cute to the utterly arbitrary. A Cautionary Tale in Dance
So, here I would only talk about a few rather arbitrary points that have occupied my mind in the recent days and leave the rest to other people to explore.
The retrospective and, in some cases, arbitrary nature of the tax has been deeply resented. Times, Sunday Times
He has been the subject of much criticism, several recall attempts and diatribes because of what is described as arbitrary and arrogant behavior, peremptory statements and decisions.
Its main ambition was to liberate individuals from the arbitrary authority of place, family, and folkway, and to permit them a life of material success amid an economic system that generated an endless bazaar of values ... Conservatism after the consumer society
The inputs employed for simulation are somewhat arbitrary, but they reflect underlying realities.
Although the date of the millennium is arbitrary, it has undeniably affected how people behave.
The issue is that they make exceptions to that principle in the case of certain arbitrary claims of political authority; or that they try to rationalize coercion by saying that some kind of collectivity makes it not really coercive - didn't we agree to that tax increase?, etc. Rad Geek People's Daily
But if implemented it would have represented a dangerous exercise in arbitrary power. Times, Sunday Times
However, given that all three slopes differed significantly, it seemed arbitrary as to which slope to select.
But I don't think that there need be an intrinsic link of signifier to signified for a language to be used in nonarbitrary ways. Binary Oppositions: Good or Bad?
This question, divested of the phraseology calculated to represent me as struggling for an arbitrary personal prerogative, is either simply a question who shall decide, or an affirmation that nobody shall decide, what the public safety does require, in cases of Rebellion of Invasion. Balkinization
His either/or choice was arbitrary and unnecessary, and he hurt his organization as a result.
Though the intercutting itself works, the order of the segments seems a bit arbitrary. THE COVE DVD Review – Collider.com
The team will be hard pushed to crack this scam as the practice appears to have been arbitrary.
This is of course a somewhat arbitrary limitation from a fire protection point of view.
Not having any for fifteen years means I find them quite arbitrary now, impossible to control.
So think about it this way: if you've got an artificial constraint, artificial constraints lead to arbitrary distinctions and a skewed worldview.
They were still, however, subject to nonarbitrary lending qualifications. Halfway There
The issue is that they make exceptions to that principle in the case of certain arbitrary claims of political authority; or that they try to rationalize coercion by saying that some kind of collectivity makes it not really coercive — didn’t we agree to that tax increase? Why should natural lawyers care about teaching freed-market economics?
In the absence of any clear division between administrative and judicial functions, even the humblest official enjoyed arbitrary power.
Inadequate payments and arbitrary refusals to honor bills by government and private industry are financially starving the health care system to the detriment of us all.
This effectively enables the Home Office to make arbitrary decisions, deporting people as they see fit, without any independent inquiry.
Thus a major new avenue of arbitrary government power would be opened up.
Unlike proper length, this generalized affine length depends on some arbitrary choices (roughly speaking, the length will vary depending on the coordinates one chooses). Singularities and Black Holes
Even apart from the problems above, retributivists have yet to construct a nonarbitrary way of deciding what sentence the guilty offender deserves as punishment. Punishment
But the new Chancellor must beware: arbitrary taxes on one group of business people spook all business people. Times, Sunday Times
In any event, I reserve the right to be arbitrary and capricious in choosing which comments to delete because they cross the line.
This graph shows the job losses from the start of the employment recession, in percentage terms aligned at the bottom of the recession (Both the 1991 and 2001 recessions were flat at the bottom, so the choice was a little arbitrary). Calculated Risk
Layout is flexible: Door window may install arbitrary, indoor cut off may wantonly lateral axis installation.
initialism," the difference being it is an abbreviation using only first letters of words; an acronym being a new word created by the first letters, syllables or even arbitrary parts of the original words. Post-gazette.com - News
Thus, an object's provenience can be stated as being 30m north, 22m east, and 3.5m down from an arbitrary fixed point on the site (called the datum point).
IN THE OCCUPIED CITY, was it when you fell in love with arbitrary CApitaL LettERS, it alics, caesurae | | and repetitions repetiTIOns? Books news, reviews and author interviews | guardian.co.uk
Undocumented refugees are very vulnerable to harassment and extortion by the police, threatening arbitrary arrest or refoulement.
In each case the ordinate shows the relative cleavage at each bond, presented on an arbitrary scale.
The censorian judgments, although arbitrary and as a rule spontaneous, were sometimes elicited by prosecution: and an accuser was found to bring the conduct of Gracchus formally before the notice of the magistrates. A History of Rome During the Later Republic and Early Principate
The purpose of the provision in paragraph 18.15 is to prevent arbitrary or capricious searches.
Earnings may also be biased by inflation and a long list of arbitrary accounting choices. Principles of Corporate Finance
You have chosen to act at the instance and behest of (activist) Ms Medha Patkar and others in haste and in a high-handed arbitrary manner, " the statement said.
ALHAMA DE MURCIA, Spain VN – Saxo Bank-Sungard boss Bjarne Riis blasted UCI leadership over what he called an arbitrary ban on race radio and said the cycling governing body is out of touch with the elite level of the sport. Saxo’s Bjarne Riis blasts UCI over radio ban
The choice of players for the team seemed completely arbitrary.
It has been said more than once that 10 seems a rather arbitrary number, and it has not been clear how the authors of the law arrived at it.
That standard, incidentally, is of those arbitrary figures that bears no relation to any real threat, and has been cobbled from the usual junk science which the EU commission so loves. Surely we should be debating this?
These distinctions may seem somewhat arbitrary, but they highlight fundamentally different attitudes toward plant ecology, to science in general and to botany in particular.
In a shockingly inaccurate critique of QuAM for focusing on "revelry" as opposed to "awareness", the Editorial Board not only passes judgment on an arbitrary conception of education, but participates in the stigmatization of LGBT sexuality. Columbia Spectator - News, sports, and entertainment coverage for the Morningside Heights community in New York City.
Some of the ill feeling dates back to the somewhat arbitrary way Edison was first given the charter.
As an innocent man, his own government consented to his arbitrary detention and torture by a foreign power.
Sometimes an action or object has a meaning in this dimension that is quite arbitrary.
Having laws you're not going to enforce is an invitation for capricious and arbitrary prosecution.
In this thesis he studied the representation of arbitrary functions by the eigenfunctions of partial differential equations and other given sets of functions.
It is almost arbitrary to decide where those waking states with high tension of suggestibility end and the hypnotic states begin, and not less arbitrary to call the higher degrees only hypnotism and to designate the lower degrees as hypnoid states. Psychotherapy
Catholicism, however gripped the masses by virtue of its incense, its ritual, all quite arbitrary, compulsion without purpose.
'To bereave a man of life, or by violence to confiscate his estate, without accusation or trial, would be so gross and notorious an act of despotism as must at once convey the alarm of tyranny throughout the whole nation; but confinement of the person, by secretly hurrying him to jail, where his sufferings are unknown or forgotten, is a less public, a less striking, and therefore a more dangerous engine of arbitrary government. OpEdNews - Quicklink: Froomkin: A Blow Against Tyranny
Nothing was done to stop arbitrary rule by petty officials.
What you are saying is that the great mass of people are forced to settle for living under a system of tyrranical, arbitrary and unreviewable diktat — over the barely concealed near-tribal conflicts for supremacy — and in addition — that they must suffer under abusive, poorly run governments, as well? The Volokh Conspiracy » How Jonathan Adler Gets It Wrong, and Soccer Gets It Right:
Why draw arbitrary lines of distinction and value in different spheres of work?
Likewise, no evidence is incompatible with mythicism - as long as one is willing to posit an arbitrary mythmaker who invents things for no obvious reason, and who often expresses himself so poorly that one often gets the "wrong impression" that he is talking about a historical figure. Is There Evidence For Mythicism?
The salary discrimination permits the superiors to fix the salaries of their employees on an arbitrary basis.
For an academic all-rounder, medicine was an almost arbitrary choice. Times, Sunday Times
These days arbitrary power has unmistakably comic undertones. Times, Sunday Times
Under this political arrangement people gain a great deal of protection from the arbitrary exercise of power that is so common in agrarian societies. Macrosociology: An Introduction to Human Societies
In each test the operator measured the skin impedance at this point as indicated in arbitrary units on the galvanometer while the patient held the hand electrode to complete the electrical circuit.
It is utterly false and cruelly arbitrary to put all the play and learning into childhood, all the work into middle age, and all the regrets into old age. Margaret Mead
Did some ancient tastemaker make an arbitrary choice that the rest of us simply followed? Times, Sunday Times
There is no nonarbitrary way to bar religious conscience alone from politics. Balderdash
Mathematicians sometimes say that A is an arbitrary isosceles triangle, but all they mean is that A could be any such triangle.
A science, in the proper acceptation of that term, cannot be formed technically, that is, from observation of the similarity existing between different objects, and the purely contingent use we make of our knowledge in concreto with reference to all kinds of arbitrary external aims; its constitution must be framed on architectonical principles, that is, its parts must be shown to possess an essential affinity, and be capable of being deduced from one supreme and internal aim or end, which forms the condition of the possibility of the scientific whole. The Critique of Pure Reason
The present approach is too piecemeal, too arbitrary. Times, Sunday Times
In fact, however, selection is bound to be arbitrary, because rationales for including one country and excluding another are based on judgments as to what the determinant variables are.
But change that is too arbitrary and too frequent petrifies firms, especially before their rules have been tested in the courts. Obama threatens to follow in FDR's economic missteps
This article generalizes their approach to allow for arbitrary modes of inheritance, including diploidy, polyploidy, sex linkage, cytoplasmic inheritance, and genomic imprinting.
The German federal and state interior ministers have encouraged the authorities to carry out ever more arbitrary and illegal actions, in order ensure deportations.
The High Court said while granting maintenance, some formula or yardstick must be adopted and it must not be whimsical or arbitrary.
But, sadly, a climate of opinion is being created in which facts are discounted in favour of fantasies, arbitrary allegations and wild apprehensions.
Its curves are arbitrary, and what we call accidental, but one after another follows it as if he were guided by a chart on which it was laid down. Complete Project Gutenberg Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. Works
On the contrary, the relationship between signifier and signified is arbitrary.
Our fourth and final point is that it is not clear why market participants should suddenly forget the arbitrary way the conventional judgment is formed once it has been established (and reify the price it supports).
When the religious response moves from condemning a rhetorical tactic to condemning the very act of criticism -- as if the notion of faith falls under some arbitrary plafond of immunity -- fair discourse is effectively blocked. The Fat Line Between Free Speech and Defamation
In the fourteenth century, two parallel movements were under way to enforce Magna Carta's curbs on arbitrary royal authority.
The truly religious, following the logic of submission to political and moral ideals, and to the arbitrary will of God, are terrifying to us and almost incomprehensible.
First, the excessive concentration of arbitrary powers, inclusive of the supervision of the police, in the hands of appointed sub-sovereigns with no local roots contributed to unresponsiveness and inertia.
The retrospective and, in some cases, arbitrary nature of the tax has been deeply resented. Times, Sunday Times
Sometimes Boyle felt that although humans are made in God's image they, like other created beings, are "at their best but umbratile, and Arbitrary Pictures of God their Creatour" (BP 4: 4, BOA Â§2. 2.38, p. 145). Sticky Wants to Grab
If this wasn't about arbitrary exclusion at the core of it, no one would be arguing about which sort of tension driven projectile is sufficiently technologically backward to count. On Crossbows For 50-Year-Olds
The dielectric loss in each case is rated in nepers of attenuation at some arbitrary frequency, 0.
The lapidarian patience she has expended in trimming, breathing upon, and polishing these bits of opaque cellophane betrays a concern that has less to do with art than with private worship and the embellishment of private fetishes with secret and arbitrary meanings. Portrait of An Artist
We propose a scheme on secret sharing of an arbitrary two-atom entanglement via entanglement swapping in cavity QED.
It meant legal rationality and efficiency, both of which were modern improvements on the arbitrary exercise of power. Times, Sunday Times
To each triangle, there exists a similar triangle of arbitrary magnitude.
But the new Chancellor must beware: arbitrary taxes on one group of business people spook all business people. Times, Sunday Times
Four questions for corporate finance One man's efficient, interconnected global market is another man's arbitrary and nationally divisive casino.
The only action of verification proposed here is, in fact, the decision to believe with an unqualified commitment that rejects all doubt, said decision being based on entirely arbitrary and personal dispositions: the extent to which we see pattern in the world; the extent to which we read pattern as purpose; the extent to which we deny the possibility of unpurposed pattern; the extent to which we allow firm convictions to become inflexible by disacknowledging contingency. Archive 2010-03-01
The world you visualize is a lawless jungle of arbitrary violence where the strong rule absolutely. Immigration Reform, Arnold Kling | EconLog | Library of Economics and Liberty
The threshold has to be low, to prevent arbitrary exclusion of reasonable provers, but it cannot be nonzero zero, because in the real world it is hard to check a proof with absolute certainty.
Such choices are quite arbitrary, and cannot be the basis of a serious definition of language. The Chomsky Update - Linguistics and Politics
Many of the new rules seem as arbitrary as the old familiar ones.
Please explain to Alan Blinder that it is not the breach of an arbitrary government machination like the "debt ceiling" that will serve as the trigger for a default. Who's Right: Blinder or Druckenmiller on Debt Limit?
On some level, I have been able to detach myself from them, and to see them as a condition which is every bit as arbitrary and transient as a common cold.
Usually this measurement is done in the computational basis, but since quantum mechanics allows one to express an arbitrary state as a linear combination of basis states, provided that the states are orthonormal (a condition that ensures normalization) one can in principle measure the register in any arbitrary orthonormal basis. Quantum Computing
These laws lead to arbitrary arrests and detentions for long periods without any preliminary trial.
Far more pressing, in reality, was the need for reform of Italian justice, with its mixture of a Fascist-derived legal code, arbitrary emergency powers, and chaotic procedural and carceral conditions.
Australia, for example, can levy arbitrary tax charges on some offshore bonds. Times, Sunday Times
You find that in Oude, the very appearance of justice had been banished out of it, and that every aumil exercised an arbitrary power over the lives and fortunes of the people. The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. 12 (of 12)
The arbitrary rules grated on Wirk, but it was the no-smoking requirement that eventually precipitated her departure from the fellowship.
The arguments presented by the HFEA in court, and those made by judges in deciding in favour of the HFEA, contained a number of inconsistencies and arbitrary judgements.
As such, strategies that tend to compartmentalize individuals into arbitrary categories are not likely to be effective.
She used the meeting to single out Syria for criticism on its human rights record, especially what she calls arbitrary detentions of democracy activists in that country. CNN Transcript Nov 12, 2005
Each had a few adherents, who would not have submitted to such an arbitrary cruelty; and Le Gros was influenced by the fear of a general "skrimmage," in which more than one life, -- among the rest perhaps his own, -- might be forfeited. The Ocean Waifs A Story of Adventure on Land and Sea
Ethnic tribes that still hold on to the dream of a unified Pashtun nation refuse to recognize what they call an "arbitrary line". Attacks Continue on Afghanistan-Pakistan Border
Finding a seemingly arbitrary number in the middle of a 40 line block of code is a maintenance nightmare.
As we have indicated earlier, though, the dynamic of administrative reform seems to have been fairly arbitrary in terms of central government.
Arbitrary age discrimination can affect everyone.
Exploiting this vulnerability will lead to denial of service, execution of arbitrary code, or the disclosure of sensitive information.
Copies of the memorandum went to the membership of appeals committees that had found the provost's decisions to be arbitrary and capricious.
arbitrary division of the group into halves
Throughout the day[Sentence dictionary], repeal supporters argued that the ban on some types of weapons is arbitrary and unconstitutional.
Smith endorsed capitalism as a means to his ultimate value - control of arbitrary rule, a premise that has remained a touchstone of liberalism.
As we have explained more fully in a previous book*, we inherit this system of historical pigeonholes from Christendom; that arbitrary chequerwork of hundred-year blocks was imposed upon the entire Mediterranean and Atlantic literatures for two thousand years, and it still distorts the views of history of all but the alertest minds. The Shape of Things to Come
New faces fill empty spaces where a battalion of fallen MPs once sat, and the arbitrary brutality of a reshuffle reminds the ranks who wears the steel toecaps of power.
This system was so arbitrary and irrational that it resulted in large numbers of poor persons being excluded.
The judgments of these grammarians were often arbitrary. Times, Sunday Times
Grice suggests that the maxims are in fact not arbitrary conventions, but rather describe rational means for conducting cooperative exchanges.
Should this headline be Mind Hacks blogger says 'psychologist' is overused by sensationalist media or the more direct Media exploits reverence given to arbitrary title, says psychologist? indiecognition Fun Experiment - Boing Boing
Another important aspect of Dedekind's views about functions is that, with respect to the intended range of functions, he allows for arbitrary injective correlations between sets of numbers, indeed between sets of objects in general. Dedekind's Contributions to the Foundations of Mathematics
He was an eloquent opponent of the exercise of arbitrary power by governments the world over.
In an article, “The Home Builder Conserves,” he admonished people, before they castigated the “wasteful lumberman,” to think about how their own arbitrary demands as consumers and home builders cause waste. Aldo Leopold's Legacy
To put those forms of authority on the same register as the state and-worse-subject them all to the arbitrary power of the state is not helpful.
It recommends that a radical new funding formula is devised to redress the balance, based on actual crime figures, not an arbitrary three-way split between the divisions.
In his May decision, Ed W. Bankston said that the Social Security Administration "trampled upon the rights of this grievant," and her 90-day suspension was "arbitrary, capricious and a serious abuse of managerial discretion. Federal Diary: Union fights case of 'Little Rock 3,' charging discrimination
My claim that noun gender lacks a symbolic function (at least with respect to inanimate nouns) should not be taken to imply that noun gender is utterly arbitrary and unmotivated.
“The legitimacy of the prepositional ending in literary English must be uncompromisingly maintained; in respect of elegance or inelegance, every example must be judged not by any arbitrary rule, but on its own merits …” Up from out of in under for
The diversity of services outlined in Figure 8.4 makes any classification somewhat arbitrary.
Then too, even as regards the story, Shakespeare varies from Whetstone much more materially than the latter does from Cinthio: representing the illicit meeting of Claudio and Juliet as taking place under the shield of a solemn betrothment; which very much lessens their fault, as marriage bonds were already upon them; and proportionably heightens Angelo's wickedness, as it brings on him the guilt of making the law responsible for his own arbitrary rigour. Shakespeare His Life Art And Characters
The only rule the king has to obey is that eventually he has to call every prisoner in an arbitrary number of times. Boing Boing: October 9, 2005 - October 15, 2005 Archives
Propose a method for mutual coupling compensation which is not limit to microstrip arrays and can be used in any small antenna arrays of arbitrary type and arrange.
But the moral assessment of persons with respect to their ‘sexuality’ that is so ubiquitous in the modern world would have seemed to the ancient Greeks peculiar, arbitrary, and unmotivated.
Combining Diacritics permit an operating system to support arbitrary algorithmic graphemes on the fly, and the better the rendering the bigger the problems in determining whether to search precomposed or decomposed. Discussions: Message List - root
Though critics saw him as quick-tempered, harsh, abrupt, and arbitrary, practically everyone recognized his genius as a chief of staff.
In fact the selection seems more arbitrary than this. The Times Literary Supplement
They give occasion, it is pretended, to much extortion in the officers of the farmers-general who collect the tax, which is in a great measure arbitrary and uncertain. II. Book V. Of the Sources of the General or Public Revenue of the Society
_And -- "sixth and lastly" -- should confession be made that in the present rendering a purely arbitrary title has been assigned this little book; and chiefly for commercial reasons, since the word "dizain" has been adjudged both untranslatable and, in its pristine form, repellantly outre. Chivalry
On the contrary, it has a playful attraction to form, particularly rhyme and meter - in fact, the tighter the rules, and the more punctilious and arbitrary the enforcement, the happier nonsense is.
People should use the internet to inform their purchasing rather than some superannuated arbitrary knees-up.
These days arbitrary power has unmistakably comic undertones. Times, Sunday Times
Unsurprisingly, given the risk of arbitrary expropriation and extortion, the ordinary people responded by living in studied indigence.
For the author to assert these things should be logically correlated is to do nothing more than elevate is own conception, which is not particularly rational (nor irrational) but is rather merely his arbitrary conception not shared by most people. Election Prediction: Voting will be Irrational, Arnold Kling | EconLog | Library of Economics and Liberty
Even the genetic code, which is arbitrary, is the same in all species.
So maybe the problem is thinking sins are relative to some arbitrary and ad hoc rulebook, rather than to our very nature and being.
Jon Kuzmich's ostensibly abstract painting stands out by its material subtlety, but it betokens the sort of effort that lay behind Cage's refusal of nonarbitrary decision making. SFGate: Don Asmussen: Bad Reporter
These kings have not unlimited or arbitrary power, and the generals do more by example than by authority.
Part of his concern was the smallness of the farms created by land division, and the ‘arbitrary’ selection of allottees, which allowed those without farming competence to acquire land.
Last year Human Rights Watch detailed the arbitrary arrests of 38 people in Cabinda, an oil-rich enclave locked in a long-running struggle for independence. Angola's human rights record
Many people seem to think that this search effectively ended in the late 19th/early 20th centuries, when novelists discovered realism, enhanced by modernist experiments in "psychological realism," and thus added these approaches to the earlier emphasis on storytelling, but I think that such an arbitrary circumscription of the novel's further development is effectively a renunciation of the form's own history as an "exploratory" practice. Experimental Fiction
We also know that Huemer has arbitrarily elevated on source of disagreement and downplayed his others using an arbitrary and particularized conception of the world. Election Prediction: Voting will be Irrational, Arnold Kling | EconLog | Library of Economics and Liberty
Investors in regulated industries rely on the fact that regulators will not behave in an arbitrary fashion and, if they do, that there are due process remedies that their managements and boards can pursue. Sears Chairman Unleashes 15-Page Manifesto About Um, Everything - The Consumerist
Through the analysis of EIA, a modified computational method is given, which can analyze a dihedral corner reflector with arbitrary shape of planes and with shadow objects.
Changing the subject in an almost arbitrary fashion - I'd just like to have a quiet word with the Conservative Party.
The validity of the UAO is litigated under an extremely deferential standard — arbitrary and capricious review on the administrative record developed by the EPA. The Volokh Conspiracy » Is Superfund Unconstitutional?
As reported by Ugandan LGBT advocate Julius Kaggwa, "LGBT_ Ugandans endure verbal insults, physical and sexual harassment, arbitrary arrests and torture, and humiliating publicity. Paul LeGendre: Planned Rally Could Inflame Intolerance Against Ugandan LGBTI Community
There is nothing arbitrary or accidental about the incidence of disease.
Casinos sound such arbitrary and decadent places; nobody would want their economy's fate to be determined in one.
But I never let my personal loyalties delude me into thinking that the determination of winners is anything but arbitrary.
(he had held a much-envied shore appointment at the Ministry of Marine for a year preceding his retreat from his profession and from Europe), he possessed a latent warmth of feeling and a capacity for sympathy which were concealed by a sort of haughty, arbitrary indifference of manner arising from his early training; and by a something an enemy might have called foppish, in his aspect -- like a distorted echo of past elegance. The End of the Tether
But this reduces the distinction between the national and the comprador bourgeoisie to a quite arbitrary judgement on what constitutes national development.
The way the programme of events is organized seems completely arbitrary to me.
It carries with it, of course, the risk that the guilty may sometimes go free, but that is a risk worth taking where the alternative may be either the arbitrary power of the state, or the power of the populist rabble.
In other words, speech sounds are merely the arbitrary tokens whereby linguistic exchange is carried out.

How To Use Arbitrary In A Sentence

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