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Erratic   /ɪrˈætɪk/   Listen
adjective
Erratic  adj.  
1.
Having no certain course; roving about without a fixed destination; wandering; moving; hence, applied to the planets as distinguished from the fixed stars. "The earth and each erratic world."
2.
Deviating from a wise of the common course in opinion or conduct; eccentric; strange; queer; as, erratic conduct.
3.
Irregular; changeable. "Erratic fever."
Erratic blocks, Erratic gravel, etc. (Geol.), masses of stone which have been transported from their original resting places by the agency of water, ice, or other causes.
Erratic phenomena, the phenomena which relate to transported materials on the earth's surface.


noun
Erratic  n.  
1.
One who deviates from common and accepted opinions; one who is eccentric or preserve in his intellectual character.
2.
A rogue. (Obs.)
3.
(Geol.) Any stone or material that has been borne away from its original site by natural agencies; esp., a large block or fragment of rock; a bowlder. Note: In the plural the term is applied especially to the loose gravel and stones on the earth's surface, including what is called drift.





Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48


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"Erratic" Quotes from Famous Books



... of women advance like the fleas, by erratic leaps and bounds, They owe their escape to the height or depth of their first ideas, and any interruption of their plans rather favors their execution. But they operate only within a narrow area which it is easy for the husband to make still narrower; and if he keeps ...
— Analytical Studies • Honore de Balzac
... contact with a flower-vase, which had been sent in many pieces over the sward; at the second it had met with some stone coping; and at the third it had turned over in complete dissolution, and Jack was free to tear up the turf with his hoofs, until finally his erratic course was stopped by the small boy who was responsible for the animal's behaviour. The arrival of Hubert and Emily saved the small boy from many a cuff and the donkey from a kick or two; and Jack stood amid the ruin he had created, as quiet and as docile ...
— Vain Fortune • George Moore
... a few moments. "No," he decided. "Cantwell may be erratic, and he certainly has a treacherous temper, and some mean ways. But this was hardly the sort of trick he'd go ...
— The High School Pitcher - Dick & Co. on the Gridley Diamond • H. Irving Hancock
... in name but in nothing else, the least said the better. He was born in London, but spent his childhood in Aberdeen, under the alternate care or negligence of his erratic mother. At ten he fell heir to a title, to the family seat of Newstead Abbey, and to estates yielding an income of some L1400 per year,—a large income for a poet, but as nothing to a lord accustomed to make ducks and drakes of his money. In school and college ...
— Outlines of English and American Literature • William J. Long
... position, so far at least as any hope is in my mind of rather amateurish experiments being of much help. I may seem unsympathetic in saying frankly what I feel. But amateurish or no, you are curiously erratic. Why, if you really were the Dr Ferguson whose part you play so admirably you could scarcely spend a more ...
— The Return • Walter de la Mare


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