vagary

vagarynoun/vəˈɡɛɚ.i/

• 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 climate, becomes, under the hot tropic soil, asphalt and oil, continually oozing up beneath the pressure of the strata above it.
  • 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.
• 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.