Word.ws English Dictionary

vagary

/vəˈɡɛɚ.i/

vagary noun: an erratic, unpredictable occurrence or action.

Noun

vagary (plural vagaries)

  1. An erratic, unpredictable occurrence or action.
    • It now turns out that the Pitch Lake, like most other things, owes its appearance on the surface to no convulsion or vagary at all, but to a most slow, orderly, and respectable process of nature, by which buried vegetable matter, which would have become peat, and finally brown coal, in a temperate...1871, Charles Kingsley, “La Brea”, in At Last: A Christmas in the West Indies. […], volume I, London; New York, N.Y.: Macmillan and Co., →OCLC, page 276
    • This searching was facilitated by the author's knowledge of the vagaries of Anglo-Indian spelling and the numerous colonial-era transliteration systems used for loanwords from Indian languages.2018, James Lambert, “Anglo-Indian slang in dictionaries on historical principles”, in World Englishes, volume 37, page 251
  2. Something vague.
    • to speak in vagaries
  3. An impulsive or illogical desire; a caprice or whim.
    • And then came the day when my socialism grew respectable,—still a vagary of youth, it was held, but romantically respectable.1905, Jack London, War of the Classes, Preface

vagary meaning in Urdu, Bengali, Malayalam and Kannada

vagary in Urdu

انوکھی حرکت, خودسری, موج, سنک, تلون مزاجی, ترنگ

vagary in Bengali

অপ্রত্যাশিত, উদ্ভট কাজ, ধারণা

vagary in Malayalam

fluctuation, change, variation
ചപലചിത്തത, ബുദ്ധിചാപല്യം, മനോലൗല്യം, അഭിപ്രായമാറ്റം, ഇളക്കം, മറിച്ചിൽ

vagary in Kannada

ಎಲ್ಲರಂತಿಲ್ಲದ ನಡತೆ, ವಿಚಿತ್ರವರ್ತನೆ, ಮನಬಂದಂತೆ ವರ್ತಿಸುವುದು, ಹುಚ್ಚಾಟಿಕೆ, ಐಲು, ಹುಚ್ಚಾಟ
More languagesFewer languages
vagary in Persian
بلهوسی bolhavasi, دمدمیمزاجی damdami-mezâji, هوس havas

Examples of vagary in a sentence

  • Even these vagaries may not have penetrated the juratorial perception, had not Bertram skidded a little into blasphemy.
  • Systems must be constantly poised for change: a potential for evolvability is essential if they are to respond to the vagaries of an uncertain future.
  • Nearly a dozen such enterprises now struggle each summer against the vagaries of rough weather and mosquito swarms to bring the Bard to the nation.

All 13 example sentences with vagary

Synonyms of vagary

10 more synonymsFewer synonyms

All synonyms of vagary

Forms of vagary

pluralvagaries

Origin of vagary

From Italian vagare (“wander”) and/or its source Latin vagārī (“to wander”), from Latin vagus (“wandering”). Later apparently reinterpreted in English as vague + -ery but without changing the spelling. By surface analysis, Latin vag(us) + -ary.

Words formed from vagary

Questions about vagary

What does vagary mean?
Vagary means an erratic, unpredictable occurrence or action.
What is vagary in Urdu?
Vagary in Urdu is انوکھی حرکت, خودسری, موج. See Vagary meaning in Urdu.
What part of speech is vagary?
Vagary is a noun.
How do you pronounce vagary?
Vagary is pronounced /vəˈɡɛɚ.i/.
What is the plural of vagary?
The plural of vagary is vagaries.

Words near vagary in the dictionary

  1. vagaristic
  2. vagarists
  3. vagarities
  4. vagarity
  5. vagarous
  6. vagary
  7. vagation
  8. vagations
  9. vagedgie
  10. vagedgies
  11. vagenda

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: vagary (page history and authors); vagary (Urdu Wiktionary) (page history and authors); vagary (Bengali Wiktionary) (page history and authors); vagary (Olam, E.K. Kurup corpus) (dataset and license); vagary (Kannada Wiktionary) (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: En-us-vagary.ogg.

Cite this entry: “vagary.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/vagary. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.