Meaning of capricious in English

capricious
adjective
  literary
uk
/kəˈprɪʃ.əs/ us
/kəˈprɪʃ.əs/
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changing mood or behaviour suddenly and unexpectedly:
a capricious child
He was a cruel and capricious tyrant.
Synonyms
impulsive
whimsical
Thesaurus: synonyms, antonyms, and examples
always becoming different
  • changingWe must navigate changing attitudes about women in leadership.
  • changeableBritish weather is notoriously changeable.
  • variedHe has had a rich and varied career.
  • fluidOur travel plans are fluid because of the train strike.
  • dynamicThe Japanese economy is much more dynamic than our own.
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SMART Vocabulary: related words and phrases
Changing frequently
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Related words

capriciously
capriciousness
(Definition of capricious from the Cambridge Advanced Learner's Dictionary & Thesaurus © Cambridge University Press)

capricious | American Dictionary

capricious
adjective
us
/kəˈprɪʃ·əs, -ˈpri·ʃəs/
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likely to change, or reacting to a sudden desire or new idea:
We have had very capricious weather lately.
(Definition of capricious from the Cambridge Academic Content Dictionary © Cambridge University Press)

Examples of capricious

capricious
The ideal of being independent from the capricious events of the world was obviously of great importance to a wide variety of early modern thinkers.
From the Cambridge English Corpus
Typically, when faced with apparently capricious rules, researchers seek ways to express the changes as natural looking processes, given some theoretical model.
From the Cambridge English Corpus
Bankrupting one taxpayer to pay the costs of another could be seen as truly capricious.
From the Cambridge English Corpus
She too was a temptress who could beguile and terrify, and she was very capricious.
From the Cambridge English Corpus
This then breaks down into a march, which is more regular (and slightly pompous) and sometimes pitted against the capricious material.
From the Cambridge English Corpus
One is the capricious nature of the oscillations.
From the Cambridge English Corpus
The popular profile of ballooning as a capricious and 'unscientific' business has a long history.
From the Cambridge English Corpus
In her new milieu, this child is, in reality, considered to be a captive, subject to the capricious demands of her new environment.
From the Cambridge English Corpus
It is therefore a fragile and potentially capricious relationship.
From the Cambridge English Corpus
They are representative in showing the capricious nature of the oscillations.
From the Cambridge English Corpus
An important implication of this meritocratic view was that leaders must be insulated from the capricious and morally corrosive practices of parliamentary politics.
From the Cambridge English Corpus
The resulting arrangement of care-giving may look haphazard or capricious, but the underlying principle of reciprocity is clear.
From the Cambridge English Corpus
The image of recusant martyrdom was perhaps more capricious and conflicting than the author here acknowledges.
From the Cambridge English Corpus
If the origin and evolution of life were an unpredictable oddity, based on quirks of contingency, astrobiology would be fascinating but capricious.
From the Cambridge English Corpus
The capricious powers of hereditary monarchs have gone.
From the Cambridge English Corpus
These examples are from corpora and from sources on the web. Any opinions in the examples do not represent the opinion of the Cambridge Dictionary editors or of Cambridge University Press or its licensors.
What is the pronunciation of capricious?
 
B1

Translations of capricious

in Chinese (Traditional)
反覆無常的…
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in Chinese (Simplified)
反复无常的…
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in Spanish
caprichoso…
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in Portuguese
caprichoso, imprevisível…
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in more languages
in Turkish
in French
in Dutch
in Czech
in Danish
in Indonesian
in Thai
in Vietnamese
in Polish
in Malay
in German
in Norwegian
in Ukrainian
in Russian
kaprisli, maymun iştahlı…
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capricieux…
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grillig…
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náladová, rozmarná…
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impulsiv, lunefuld…
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tidak tetap…
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ที่เปลี่ยนแปลงได้…
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tính khí thất thường…
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kapryśny…
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bermacam ragam…
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launisch…
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lunefull…
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капризний, примхливий…
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капризный, непостоянный…
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Word of the Day

know-it-all

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/ˈnəʊ.ɪt.ɔːl/
US
/ˈnoʊ.ɪt.ɑːl/

a person who thinks that they know much more than other people

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