• vagary •
Pronunciation: vay-gêr-ri • Hear it!
Part of Speech: Noun
Meaning: 1. Wandering, meandering, rambling, movement without a goal, foundering, gamboling. 2. Something vague, without sharp borders but with erratic, unpredictable changes. 3. A whim, caprice.
Notes: Today's is a lovely word semantically and phonologically. It comes with several adjectives: vagarious, vagarisome, and vagarish, the last said especially of the eyes. The quality noun is vagarity, and someone inclined toward vagaries may be called a vagarist or vagarian.
In Play: Vagaries are usually mental abstractions: "When June McBride turned down Max's marriage proposal, he couldn't locate a single cogent response among the vagaries of his mind that her rejection had brought about." They can be grand: "Some think that La Sagrada Família Basilica by Antonio Gaudí resulted from the vagaries of a demented grand imagination."
Word History: Today's Good Word was borrowed this time from Italian vagare "to wander", which it inherited from Latin vagari "to wander", based on the noun vagus "roving, wandering", which French redesigned as vague. Latin created its word from PIE wegh- "to move, drive", also underlying Sanskrit vahati "travels, drives", Latin vehere "to carry, drive", vehiculum "conveyance, means of transport", Greek ochos "cart, carriage", Albanian udhë "way, road", Russian voz "cart" and vozit' "to haul", Polish wózek "cart", Serbian voz "train" and voziti "to ride, drive", Lithuanian vežti "to drive, haul", Latvian vazāt "to haul", Dutch weg "way", German Weg "way", Norwegian vei "way", and English wagon and way. (Let's now avoid vagaries and pinpoint our gratitude on Rob Towart for thinking of today's lovely Good Word and sharing it with us.)
