subject to individual will or judgment without restriction; contingent solely upon one's discretion: an arbitrary decision.
decided by a judge or arbiter rather than by a law or statute.
having unlimited power; uncontrolled or unrestricted by law; despotic; tyrannical: an arbitrary government.
based on whim or personal preference, without reason or pattern; random: This is an unusual encyclopedia, arranged by topics in a more or less arbitrary order.
Mathematics. undetermined; not assigned a specific value: an arbitrary constant.
noun,pluralar·bi·trar·ies.
arbitraries,Printing. (in Britain) peculiar (def. 9).
Origin of arbitrary
First recorded in 1400–50; late Middle English, from Latin arbitrārius “uncertain” (i.e., depending on an arbiter's decision); see origin at arbiter, -ary
A skeptical person will object that the definition of lift as a force acting at a right angle to the airstream is arbitrary.
The science behind how an aircraft glides|By Peter Garrison/Flying Mag|September 3, 2020|Popular Science
The 1,000 jobs lost due to arbitrary border restrictions are essential to the 1,000 families that somehow depended on their wages.
Border Report: The Lingering Trauma of Family Separation|Maya Srikrishnan|August 31, 2020|Voice of San Diego
I looked at that and I say that seems quite arbitrary to me, because you can get coronavirus any time of the day.
Full Transcript: Tomi Lahren on ‘The Carlos Watson Show’|Daniel Malloy|August 31, 2020|Ozy
In March, many initially set an arbitrary reopening date of Labor Day 2020.
I’m a physician and a CEO. Why I won’t bring my employees back to the office before Labor Day 2021|matthewheimer|August 26, 2020|Fortune
First, a principle of quantum mechanics called the no-cloning theorem says that it’s impossible to copy an arbitrary quantum state, so qubits can’t be duplicated.
To live up to the hype, quantum computers must repair their error problems|Emily Conover|June 22, 2020|Science News
The truth is that Judd is really just picking an arbitrary number since there is no script.