[Ads-l] An arbitrary sense of arbitrary

[Stanton McCandlish]

On Fri, Oct 11, 2024 at 12:41 PM Daphne Preston-Kendal <dpk at nonceword.org>
wrote:

> (Computing and mathematics have a good selection of these kinds of
> repurposings of originally technical terms, notably also ‘canonical’ <
> http://jargon-file.org/archive/jargon-1.5.0.dos.txt#:~:text=CANONICAL%20%28
> >)
>

The hackish dismissive or deprecatory sense of "random" may be the
best-known of these, as it has somewhat escaped into broader public usage,
e.g. "Some random security guard at the courthouse was hassling me about
removing my belt even though it has no metal."

------------------------------------------------------------
The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org