Other forms: erratics
Erratic means jumping about with no steady pattern. Erratic behaviour, erratic driving, an erratic pulse.
It is a criticism of unpredictability rather than of quality: erratic form means good days and bad ones in no order. Erratic driving is what police record before a stop. In geology, an erratic is a boulder carried far from its home rock by a glacier and left behind, which is one of the clearest pieces of evidence for ice ages. Note erratically; and erratum, an error in a printed book.
1adjectiveerraticJumping about with no steady pattern.
“His driving was erratic, speeding up and slowing down for no reason.”
synonyms: unpredictable, inconsistent
2nounboulderA boulder carried far from its home rock by ice.
“The giant erratic in the middle of the field was left there by a glacier.”
erratic is a quality of unpredictability.
Also accepted in games: unpredictable
Latin erraticus comes from errare, to wander or stray. Error, err and errand — though errand is a different word — sit around the same wandering.
Proto-Indo-European
*h₁ers-
Middle English
erratik
English, today
erratic
From Middle English erratik. From Middle English erratik, from Middle French erratique (from Old French erratique) and its etymon la-cla errāticus.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA
Practised in Sharper Adjectives