random

noun

1. (countable, uncountable)A roving motion; course without definite direction; lack of rule or method; chance.

   “Still take advice ; though counsels, when they fly / At random, sometimes hit most happily.”

   “O ! many a shaft, at random sent, / Finds mark the archer little meant !”

2. (countable, obsolete, uncountable)Speed, full speed; impetuosity, force.

   “they were messagers vnto kyng Ban & Bors sent from kynge Arthur / therfor said the viij knyghtes ye shalle dye or be prysoners / for we ben knyghtes of kyng Claudas And therwith two of them dressid theire sperys / and Vlfyus and Brastias dressid theire speres and ranne to gyder with grete raundon”

   “[…] for coragiouſly the two kynges newely foughte with great randon and force, they ſhewed their vigors and ſtrengthes and did ſo nobly that their coũter parties had none aduaũtage.”

3. (countable, obsolete, uncountable)The full range of a bullet or other projectile; hence, the angle at which a weapon is tilted to allow the greatest range.

   “Fortie yards will they shoot levell, or very neare the marke, and 120 is their best at Random.”

   “[…] the angle at which the miſſive is to mount by ( if we will have it go to its furtheſt randome ) muſt be the half of a right one […]”

4. (colloquial, countable, figuratively, uncountable)An undefined, unknown or unimportant person; a person of no consequence.

   “The party was boring. It was full of randoms.”

5. (countable, uncountable)The direction of a rake-vein.
6. (countable, historical, uncountable)A frame for composing type.

   “Utilization of all floor space underneath case racks and randoms is another feature of the modern composing room; […]”

   “Printers' frames and randoms”

adj

1. Occurring for no particular reason; haphazard, unpredictable.

   “Our city is plagued by random acts of violence.”

   “random acts of kindness”

2. Involving an outcome which is impossible to predict, but which may be represented by a probability distribution; in the ideal case, involving outcomes which are equally likely.

   “Near-synonyms: aleatory, stochastic”

   “The flip of a fair coin is purely random.”

   “The newspaper conducted a random sample of five hundred American teenagers.”

   “The results of the field survey look random by several different measures.”

   “A toss of a loaded die is still random, though biased.”

3. Pseudorandom; mimicking the result of random selection.

   “The rand function generates a random number from a seed.”

4. (informal)Selected for no particular reason; arbitrary; unspecified.

   “A random American off the street couldn't tell the difference.”

   “You're just going to trust the word of random people on the Internet?”

   “I didn't have time to peruse the resturant's menu, so I just ordered some random dish.”

   “Whatever random hobby you're into, there's an Internet community for it.”

5. (informal)Being (part of) a varied, unrelated, and apparently arbitrary collection of things; diverse, heterogeneous.

   “My notebook has turned into a random collection of thoughts.”

   “I brought a bunch of random snacks, but nothing nutritious.”

   “I mixed a bunch of random vegetables into a salad, and it actually turned out pretty good.”

6. (informal)Apropos of nothing; lacking context, relevance, or any connection to the previous situation; unexpected.

   “This random guy just came up to me to say that he was a fan of my work.”

   “Thank you for that completely random comment... now, let's get back to our actual topic of discussion.”

   “The teacher's bartending story was interesting, but very random.”

   “I feel like pineapple is a very random thing to put on a pizza.”

7. (informal)Of a person: characterized by or often saying random things; habitually using non sequiturs.

   “You're so random! I never know what you're going to do next.”

8. (UK, slang)Being out of the ordinary; unusual or unexpected; odd, strange, bizarre.

   “That's a rather random fact!”

   “I can't believe he would say that. That's so random!”

verb

1. (intransitive, uncommon)To wander; to stray; to meander.