Crossword clues for arbitrariness
The Collaborative International Dictionary
Arbitrariness \Ar"bi*tra*ri*ness\, n.
The quality of being arbitrary; despoticalness; tyranny.
--Bp. Hall.
Wiktionary
n. The quality or state of being arbitrary.
WordNet
n. the trait of acting unpredictably and more from whim or caprice than from reason or judgment; "I despair at the flightiness and whimsicality of my memory" [syn: flightiness, whimsicality, whimsy, whimsey, capriciousness]
Wikipedia
Arbitrariness is the quality of being "determined by chance, whim, or impulse, and not by necessity, reason, or principle".
Arbitrary decisions are not necessarily the same as random decisions. For example, during the 1973 oil crisis, Americans were allowed to purchase gasoline only on odd-numbered days if their license plate was odd, and on even-numbered days if their license plate was even. The system was well-defined and not random in its restrictions; however, since license plate numbers are completely unrelated to a person's fitness to purchase gasoline, it was still an arbitrary division of people. Similarly, schoolchildren are often organized by their surname in alphabetical order, a non-random yet still arbitrary method, at least in cases where surnames are irrelevant.
Usage examples of "arbitrariness".
The violence it does to nature, to thought, to love, to morals, its arbitrariness, its mechanical form, the wrenching exegesis by which alone it can be forced from the Bible,7 its glaring partiality and eternal cruelty, are its sufficient refutation and condemnation.
It is definitely true that the number of levels in any holon has an element of arbitrariness to it, simply because there is no upper or lower limit to a manifest holarchy and therefore no absolute referent.
But he was from the first an irrepressible individualist with a hatred of the arbitrariness of tsarist power.
The experience of social repression and arbitrariness had to be balanced with legitimations of domination.
This seeing must be based on an activity of the inner light which will be similar to that in dream by its arising without any stimulus from external light-impressions, yet at the same time there must be no arbitrariness in the contents of this perception.
Precision and arbitrariness were the twin hallmarks of Conceptualist activity.
In modern times, however, this conception vanished and was replaced by the illusory idea of freedom as subjective arbitrariness which does not acknowledge a norm, a law from beyond.
On the other hand, through the annual vote on the taxes, not only were waste and arbitrariness in the employment of the public funds put a stop to, but also the foundations of the parliamentary system of government were laid: whoever holds the purse-strings is, or becomes, master of the rest.