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capricious
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  • The tip bent slightly downward, curtsied, and then, as if blown by capricious winds, swept to the right, paused, turned a half-step to the left and rose.   (source)
  • Blue-lipped and dinner-plate-eyed, they watched, mesmerized by something that they sensed but didn't understand: the absence of caprice in what the policemen did. ... The sober, steady brutality, the economy of it all.   (source)
    caprice = impulsiveness or unpredictability
  • that city had been excluded from the itineraries of the steamboats because of the river's caprices   (source)
    caprices = unpredictability
  • The preselection of facts is not based on subjective, capricious "whatever you like" but on Quality, which is reality itself.   (source)
    capricious = whim (or unpredictable chance)
  • She licked the envelope shut herself and, because the notion took hold of her suddenly—a kind of caprice and nothing more—she pressed the stamp on upside down before putting the letter in the mailbox.   (source)
    caprice = unpredictable impulse
  • the essence of teenage capriciousness   (source)
    capriciousness = unpredictability
  • Moody grew capricious. Most often he was sullen and threatening, now to Mahtob as well as to me. At other times he tried to be gentle and kind.   (source)
    capricious = impulsive and unpredictable
  • ...it is possible for the lady to be a hostile, fiercely independent, passive, dependent, feminine, aggressive, warm, castrating person all-in-one. Of course which of these she is at any particular moment would not be random or capricious — it would depend on who she is with, when, how, and much, much more.   (source)
    capricious = unpredictable
  • ...we charge you formally with ... and taking capricious and unlicensed liberties in censoring the letters of officers and enlisted men.   (source)
    capricious = random unpredictable
  • Her smile seemed to indicate that window washing was only a caprice that did not interest her.   (source)
    caprice = impulse
  • I wasn't expecting him to be that unwilling to help. Although, warlocks are capricious.   (source)
    capricious = unpredictable
  • The storm had been capricious.   (source)
  • Was it because it was exclusive and capricious?   (source)
    capricious = impulsive or unpredictable
  • For the moment, they were traveling in the proper direction, but the winter winds were capricious.   (source)
    capricious = unpredictable (prone to change quickly)
  • But you expect industrial giants-who plan in terms of decades ... to continue to function and produce, not knowing what random caprice in the skull of what random official will descend upon them at what moment to demolish the whole of their effort.   (source)
    caprice = impulsive and unpredictable idea
  • There was concern that the President was capricious, afraid to assert his will or remain committed to the issues he took up.   (source)
    capricious = impulsive or unpredictable
  • The moon is capricious to the point of insanity.   (source)
    capricious = unpredictable
  • It was often raining when I woke during the night, a light capricious shower, dancing playful rain, or...   (source)
  • His feet turned capricious, slipping off at odd angles.   (source)
    capricious = impulsive or unpredictable
  • This was irritating, as when the name of an old friend capriciously vanishes from memory.   (source)
    capriciously = suddenly and unpredictably
  • Leslie was so capricious. Lots of good fellows that Leslie would turn up her nose at and pronounce dull.   (source)
    capricious = impulsive and unpredictable
  • ...they were coming down with the strange, capricious disease which came later to be known as radiation sickness.   (source)
    capricious = unpredictable
  • But from now on it was different; they seemed at the mercy of the sky's caprices-in other words, suffered and hoped irrationally.   (source)
    caprices = instances of impulsiveness or unpredictability
  • They came at irregular intervals and moved capriciously.   (source)
    capriciously = unpredictably
  • he judged her to be capricious, and easily wearied of the pleasure of the moment.   (source)
    capricious = impulsive or unpredictable
  • Spring had come once more to Green Gables--the beautiful capricious, reluctant Canadian spring,   (source)
    capricious = unpredictable
  • ...it seemed to indicate some capricious revulsion of thought or feeling...   (source)
    capricious = impulsive or unpredictable
  • He thought this was but a mood, a caprice, and he was too proud to lend himself to it once again.   (source)
    caprice = impulsive act
  • They dined together, and Philip was delighted when he had ordered something which tempted Mildred's capricious appetite.   (source)
    capricious = unpredictable
  • curtains which draped the windows, and which puffed, floated, and flapped at the capricious will of a stiff breeze   (source)
  • de Guermantes, taking a sudden capricious fancy for myself, invited me there,   (source)
    capricious = impulsive
  • retired from the Diplomatic Service in a capricious moment of annoyance at not being offered the Embassy at Paris, a post to which he considered that he was fully entitled by reason of ... and his inordinate passion for pleasure.   (source)
  • she grew yearly more capricious and impatient;   (source)
    capricious = impulsive or unpredictable
  • She had humor; she had intellect; she could cook to perfection; and her highly strung temperament made her uncertain, incalculable, variable, capricious, cruel, in a word, enchanting.   (source)
  • Mildred and I grew into each other's hearts, so that we were content to go hand-in-hand wherever caprice led us,   (source)
    caprice = impulse (whim or sudden desire)
  • my capricious little Capri maiden   (source)
    capricious = impulsive or unpredictable
  • ...his capricious temper and vicious nature.   (source)
  • The family cannot be broken up by a whim, a caprice, or even by the sin of one of the partners in the marriage,   (source)
    caprice = an impulsive act
  • Mamma was an abject slave to their caprices, but Papa was not so easily subjugated,   (source)
    caprices = instances of impulsiveness
  • It is the first time I have been told I am capricious.   (source)
    capricious = impulsive or unpredictable
  • She took her mother's hand in both her own, and gazed into her eyes with an earnestness that was seldom seen in her wild and capricious character.   (source)
    capricious = impulsive and unpredictable
  • And all this was to have come ... in the shape of an old gentleman's caprice.   (source)
    caprice = impulsive action
  • That girl's hard and haughty and capricious to the last degree, and has been brought up by Miss Havisham to wreak revenge on all the male sex.   (source)
    capricious = impulsive or unpredictable
  • Bahorel, a man of caprice, was scattered over numerous cafes; the others had habits, he had none.   (source)
    caprice = impulsiveness and unpredictability
  • ...he who, to satisfy a caprice of his corrupt heart, is about to make England shed so much blood,   (source)
    caprice = whim (impulse)
  • Emma was growing difficult, capricious.   (source)
    capricious = impulsive or unpredictable
  • the sea has only just ceased from its raging, and being at the best of times of uncertain and capricious nature, we may chance to be detained on the island, or forced to land at a considerable distance from home.   (source)
    capricious = tending to make sudden changes
  • she had a capricious and hasty temper   (source)
    capricious = impulsive and unpredictable
  • He was rather too indulgent in humouring her caprices;   (source)
    caprices = instances of impulsiveness or unpredictability
  • From her infancy, she had been surrounded with servants, who lived only to study her caprices; the idea that they had either feelings or rights had never dawned upon her, even in distant perspective.   (source)
  • We felt that they were not the tyrants to rule our lot according to their caprice,   (source)
    caprice = impulsiveness
  • they fluttered, chirping and frolicking from bush to bush, and tree to tree, capricious from the very profusion and variety around them.   (source)
    capricious = impulsive or unpredictable
  • ...his pride and caprice were the cause, of all that Jane had suffered, and still continued to suffer.   (source)
    caprice = impulsive behavior
  • What I knew of physics I had learned in the junkyard, where the physical world often seemed unstable, capricious.†   (source)
  • Had all those years, as well as Mom and Dad's time on the street—not to mention their current life in an abandoned tenement—been a caprice inflicted on us by Mom?†   (source)
  • Edgar had never seen his father capriciously select a dog for breeding, but in those early days, there was nothing yet to call a Sawtelle Dog—just John Sawtelle's dogs.†   (source)
  • By their very nature, human beings are so capricious, so complex, so delightfully contradictory, that they deserve not only our consideration, but our reconsideration—and our unwavering determination to withhold our opinion until we have engaged with them in every possible setting at every possible hour.†   (source)
  • Odysseus had endless patience for Agamemnon's caprice, but with those beneath him he could be harsh as winter storms.†   (source)
  • Children hated generously, capriciously.†   (source)
  • He rode in his grandmother's red Chevy Caprice Classic, a long and comfortable car that perfectly fit her style.†   (source)
  • Suddenly—with a pneumatic gasp—it gave so capriciously I stumbled.†   (source)
  • Humans, unregulated, are cruel and capricious; violent and selfish; miserable and quarrelsome.†   (source)
  • The elves' sudden shift in behavior reminded her of a word she had occasionally heard the dwarves use to describe them:capricious .†   (source)
  • And children ruled the Middle Kingdom with complete caprice.†   (source)
  • Barely able to contain his fury, he wrote of the "vain, jealous, and half frantic mind" of John Adams, a man ruled "by caprice alone."†   (source)
  • Caprice doesn't play a role in physics.†   (source)
  • Dragons and young girls are both capricious, and it may be that you will need to adjust your plans.†   (source)
  • And he'd think about the capriciousness of fate: he heard stories of other people who had escaped by hiding above ceilings or immersing themselves in rivers or latrines, whereas he had merely panicked and forgotten to close and lock his door.†   (source)
  • Both ofus were unassailable proof that each of the tribes of Europe had imported their own separate fevers, predilections, and reveries into the capricious, turbulent consciousness of America.†   (source)
  • And I am arch and fluent and capricious; for he is melancholy, he is romantic.†   (source)
  • However, these may not be enough to control the caprice and wickedness of man.†   (source)
  • I sat on the living room couch, my eyes glued to one of the members of the Elite—Claudia, a capricious and vain vampire who had managed to convince my father and brother that she had our family's best interests at heart.†   (source)
  • Desirable, exciting, capricious.†   (source)
  • —Over here, Yousef said, and they hurried across the small parking lot to an ancient Chevy Caprice, puddle-brown.†   (source)
  • On the capriciously changing wind the smoke from Birkenau had blown off and away, at least momentarily, and in the clear sunlight the great glorious white stallion romped again around the fenced rim of the paddock, tossing tail and mane in a small windstorm of dust.†   (source)
  • To all that, Peters added the capricious vanity of an alcoholic wreck.†   (source)
  • The seemingly incongruous and arbitrary jumble of things and ideas in the work of the Symbolists (Blok, Verhaeren, Whitman) is not a stylistic caprice.†   (source)
  • A freak of Nature, perhaps, some bizarre caprice, an extravagant joke, a game—who knows?†   (source)
  • Before some caprice of Virgie's, her spirit drooped its head.†   (source)
  • Word meanings change over time. For example, in "the Taming of the Shrew", Shakespeare uses the word "humor" to describe Kate's capricious nature.
    capricious = impulsive and unpredictable
  • The capricious nature of legislated tax changes inhibits long-term planning.
    capricious = unpredictable
  • It was a capricious summer breeze.
    capricious = unpredictably changing directions
  • I have made enough money to satisfy both my needs and my caprices.   (source)
    caprices = impulsive desires
  • The harvest had been so delayed by the capricious weather that...   (source)
    capricious = unpredictable
  • All this, instead of being as you now are, dependent on the mere caprice of Puffy!   (source)
    caprice = impulsiveness or unpredictability
  • the capricious regulations regarding the public highways   (source)
    capricious = unpredictable
  • It is better to be torn to pieces at a spring, than to be a mouse at the caprice of such a cat.   (source)
    caprice = impulsiveness (and resultant unpredictability)
  • I dare say I am a capricious fellow, David.   (source)
    capricious = impulsive and unpredictable
  • And mamma is capricious and tearful and insane!   (source)
    capricious = impulsive or unpredictable
  • he could not sacrifice his own happiness to his father's caprice   (source)
    caprice = impulsive wishes
  • said Bathsheba, dropping from haughtiness to entreaty with capricious inconsequence.   (source)
    capricious = impulsive
  • They have no difficulties to contend with at home, no opposition, no caprice, no delays.   (source)
    caprice = unpredictability
  • you can't imagine, Dmitri Prokofitch, how moody and, so to say, capricious he is.   (source)
    capricious = impulsive or unpredictable
  • Her action is too capricious, as though the Erinyes selected for punishment only certain men and certain sins.   (source)
  • Isn't Romance capricious!   (source)
  • The aunt was a capricious woman,   (source)
    capricious = impulsive and unpredictable
  • Nothing was said for some moments, while a succession of riotous waves rolled by, which by one of those occasional caprices of the seas were tumbling, not heaving it.   (source)
    caprices = unpredictable events
  • So capriciously were the people moved, that tears immediately rolled down several ferocious countenances which had been glaring at the prisoner a moment before, as if with impatience to pluck him out into the streets and kill him.   (source)
    capriciously = with impulsiveness that is hard to predict
  • Hansbach, following the caprice of another incline, had gone with my companions away into unknown depths.   (source)
    caprice = unpredictability
  • but it is ridiculous thus to yield to the caprices of an old man, and I shall, therefore, act according to my conscience.   (source)
    caprices = impulsive acts
  • If any caprice of temper should induce him to cast aside this golden opportunity before he has brought it to perfection, I consider myself absolved from extending any assistance to his mother and sister.   (source)
    caprice = impulsiveness
  • if, on the reading of your will, you sank in the opinion of your fellow-men, either by turning out to be poorer than they expected, or by leaving your money in a capricious manner, without strict regard to degrees of kin.   (source)
    capricious = impulsive
  • They were capricious and beyond her control.†   (source)
  • Alan met Yousef in the hotel turnabout and got in the Caprice.†   (source)
  • It has no laws, no bounds, no definitions; it seems to be a caprice.†   (source)
  • "That's a weather phenomenon, a caprice of the wind.†   (source)
  • Using different modes of trial for similar cases under the same government is capricious.†   (source)
  • Why couldn't he find it, say, in a woman's gait or culinary caprices or artistic taste?†   (source)
  • There would be occasional capricious exceptions, such as the shipment of Jews from Malkinia.†   (source)
  • The Caprice rolled to a stop in front of the apartment where Rameck lived with his mother and new baby sister.†   (source)
  • Anything too evenly worn was a dead giveaway; real age, as I came to see from the genuine pieces that passed through my hands, was variable, crooked, capricious, singing here and sullen there, warm asymmetrical streaks on a rosewood cabinet from where a slant of sun had struck it while the other side was as dark as the day it was cut.†   (source)
  • This attic was originally built to house the butlers and ladies' maids of the Metropol's guests; but when the practice of traveling with servants fell out of fashion, the unused rooms had been claimed by the caprices of casual urgency—thenceforth warehousing scraps of lumber, broken furniture, and other assorted debris.†   (source)
  • Arms are as capricious as the desert, and, if they are not used, the next time they might not function.†   (source)
  • Set on its own garbage heap, at the mercy of capricious tides, it was the spot where the bay belched filth from the sewers back onto land.†   (source)
  • To leave the impression in the scientific world that the source of all scientific reality is merely a subjective, capricious harmony is to solve problems of epistemology while leaving an unfinished edge at the border of metaphysics that makes the epistemology unacceptable.†   (source)
  • It is not capricious, it is the force that opposes capriciousness; the ordering principle of all scientific and mathematical thought which destroys capriciousness, and without which no scientific thought can proceed.†   (source)
  • The red Chevy Caprice roared away.†   (source)
  • It is not capricious, it is the force that opposes capriciousness; the ordering principle of all scientific and mathematical thought which destroys capriciousness, and without which no scientific thought can proceed.†   (source)
  • But Aureliano, Segundo, excited at the caprice of disguising himself as a tiger, brought Father Antonio Isabel to the house in order to convince Ursula that the carnival was not a pagan feast, as she said, but a Catholic tradition.†   (source)
  • Then he shrugged, exhibiting the stoicism of one conditioned to the caprice of government-supported thieves.†   (source)
  • He knew that the Board would rule against him; he knew that the key to the dark, capricious mystery of the Board's contradictory decisions was the secret power of pull.†   (source)
  • Yossarian was never lonely with Nurse Duckett, who really did know how to keep her mouth shut and was just capricious enough.†   (source)
  • And though the decision aggravated still further the already infuriated Hamiltonians, who saw it as stillone more example of Adams's weakness and capriciousness, much of the electorate approved, and especially in Pennsylvania.†   (source)
  • If all thirteen States had to ratify the Constitution, the essential interests of the entire Union would be exposed to the caprice or corruption of a single State.†   (source)
  • The business was housed in a badly maintained stucco and corrugated-steel building that appeared to have been blown together by a capricious tornado, using parts of several other structures that it had previously torn asunder.†   (source)
  • With his penguin shape and thin cigarettes and Chevy Caprice, he was not the type of man who would interest assassins.†   (source)
  • Yossarian's perceptions were soon so fuzzy that he paid no notice to the beige turban the fat one crowding into him kept wearing until late the next morning when the scheming ten-year-old pimp with the Cuban panatella snatched it off in public in a bestial caprice that exposed in the brilliant Sicilian daylight her shocking, misshapen and denudate skull.†   (source)
  • So it was a simple matter of chance that he revealed his political sentiments, and it was purely a matter of curiosity, a caprice, that brought him to visit the doctor for the treatment of a pain that he did not have.†   (source)
  • And I am arch and fluent and capricious; for he is melancholy, he is romantic.†   (source)
  • King rules or barons rule: The strong man strongly and the weak man by caprice.†   (source)
  • But he wasn't silent any more, and his old reserve was gone to pieces; he was boisterous, capricious, haughty, critical, arbitrary, mimicking and deviling, and he crowed, croaked, made faces and had the table all but spinning in this dining room of stable and upright wealth.†   (source)
  • They lumbered back into the herd from which they had been so capriciously chosen and grew less and less individually recognizable.†   (source)
  • But still the phrases flickered on as ephemeral and capricious as before, as thwarting-the abrupt and fragmentary glimpses of a figure passing behind the brief notches of parapets.†   (source)
  • For I wanted to see how Mary Carmichael set to work to catch those unrecorded gestures, those unsaid or half-said words, which form themselves, no more palpably than the shadows of moths on the ceiling, when women are alone, unlit by the capricious and coloured light of the other sex.†   (source)
  • Come to that, we have no police nowadays; no crimes past or present, no more criminals-only condemned men hoping for the most capricious of pardons; and among these are the police themselves.†   (source)
  • A strange chaotic sensation was taking hold of him-a tumultuous, giddy freedom, a cruel caprice that made him want to caper, to skip, to claw at his hands, to pinch himself until he screamed.†   (source)
  • 'After the capricious fires, the abysmal dullness of youth,' said Neville, 'the light falls upon real objects now.†   (source)
  • "Now, damn it—I'll break both our necks!" swore her capriciously passionate companion.†   (source)
  • So many women are capricious, breaking into odd flaws of passion or frivolity.†   (source)
  • "It is this," he continued, with capricious compunction.†   (source)
  • I mean, what a tantalizing, capricious little woman!†   (source)
  • Aglaya was growing hourly more capricious and gloomy, and this distressed him.†   (source)
  • It was rather that a power he couldn't control capriciously silenced his mind.†   (source)
  • "Yes, perhaps I am capricious," she murmured.†   (source)
  • "Oh, I am very sure that monsieur is not capricious," she said with a roguish smile.†   (source)
  • I grew self-willed, addicted to the wildest caprices, and a prey to the most ungovernable passions.†   (source)
  • What she has done for him demands his constant love and gratitude, not his illhumour and caprice.†   (source)
  • WAGNER I've had, myself, at times, some odd caprices, But never yet such impulse felt, as this is.†   (source)
  • I am standing for …. my caprice, and for its being guaranteed to me when necessary.†   (source)
  • On my part it was the caprice of a pampered man, and on his part simple greed for money….†   (source)
  • Adam dared not plead again, for Dinah's was not the voice of caprice or insincerity.†   (source)
  • That it was not innate caprice he was more and more certain.†   (source)
  • No, you are not, and you never will be, arbitrary or capricious.†   (source)
  • Such was the main principle; the caprice of man was only to be traced in minuter details.†   (source)
  • Emma yielded to this lazy mode of satisfying all her caprices.†   (source)
  • I have suffered a martyrdom from their incompetency and caprice.†   (source)
  • The trunk of a tree is immovable; the foliage is capricious.†   (source)
  • "Yes, my dear friend," he began, "such is fortune's caprice.†   (source)
  • "My Emma!" replied Mrs. Weston, smiling, "what is the certainty of caprice?"†   (source)
  • It was a capricious breeze, coming from the coast, and after it passed the sea became smooth.†   (source)
  • It would be ridiculous in me to regulate my conduct by such caprices.†   (source)
  • The devotion of Mr Sparkler was only to be equalled by the caprice and cruelty of his enslaver.†   (source)
  • I grant that the caprices of democracy are perpetual; its instruments are rude; its laws imperfect.†   (source)
  • If I had been his wife, I could have been the slave of his caprices for a word of love a year.†   (source)
  • Not an unevenness of the ground, not a caprice in the architecture, not a fold.†   (source)
  • But his learning had grown rusty with disuse, and his vocabulary was defective and capricious.†   (source)
  • They say Fortune is a woman and capricious.†   (source)
  • Capricious and unfaithful, the king wished to be called Louis the Just and Louis the Chaste.†   (source)
  • As a rule he was very willful, even capricious, though always friendly.†   (source)
  • The capricious ravine of streets did not cut this block of houses into too disproportionate slices.†   (source)
  • "Oh, it's a real caprice de prince," said Tristram.†   (source)
  • Let us go, Alexey Fyodorovitch, she is too capricious to-day.†   (source)
  • He knows my tastes, my caprices, my wants.†   (source)
  • ] This is indeed a strange caprice of fortune.†   (source)
  • But the Red Sea is full of caprice, and often boisterous, like most long and narrow gulfs.†   (source)
  • The baron might possibly have perceived it, but, attributing it to a caprice, feigned ignorance.†   (source)
  • He distrusted the capriciousness of women.†   (source)
  • And no wonder, Lise, no wonder …. your caprices will make me hysterical too.†   (source)
  • Outside the cuddy he put his head in the second mate's door to inform him of my unheard-of caprice to take a five hours' anchor watch on myself.†   (source)
  • She remembered the chemist's warning against increasing the dose; and she had heard before of the capricious and incalculable action of the drug.†   (source)
  • From the thick throat of the commander of the Patna came a low rumble, on which the sound of the word schwein fluttered high and low like a capricious feather in a faint stir of air.†   (source)
  • There stood "1650" in ornate numbers, and framing the date were all sorts of curlicued engraved lines, done in the "modern fashion" of the period, bombastic and capricious arabesques and crests that were half stars, half flowers.†   (source)
  • It was one of those cloudless days which sometimes occur in Wessex and elsewhere between days of cold and wet, as if intercalated by caprice of the weather-god.†   (source)
  • "Sometimes I am tempted to think that Mrs. Pontellier is capricious," said Madame Lebrun, who was amusing herself immensely and feared that Edna's abrupt departure might put an end to the pleasure.†   (source)
  • He was the plaything of the imp of the cards, a captive of the capricious whims of its favor, which would sometimes start things out on an easy wave of luck—all jacks, queens, kings, and sums of eleven—so that the game was over before the third time through (a fleeting triumph, which only pricked your nerves to try again); at other times the imp waited until the ninth and final card to deny any chance of its ever being covered or at the very last moment it abruptly blocked everything…†   (source)
  • It is as if loneliness were a hard and absolute condition of existence; the envelope of flesh and blood on which our eyes are fixed melts before the outstretched hand, and there remains only the capricious, unconsolable, and elusive spirit that no eye can follow, no hand can grasp.†   (source)
  • But "there is nothing more capricious than the memory of a child: what it will hold, and what it will lose."†   (source)
  • Tho' some of these caprices of the pit could not but be observed by their object, yet were they beyond the construing of such a nature.†   (source)
  • She had always consistently ignored the world of outer aspirants, or had recognized its individual members only when prompted by motives of self-interest; and the very capriciousness of her condescensions had, as Lily was aware, given them special value in the eyes of the persons she distinguished.†   (source)
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