CHAOTIC

Pronunciation (US):

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 Dictionary entry overview: What does chaotic mean? 

• CHAOTIC (adjective)
  The adjective CHAOTIC has 3 senses:

1. lacking a visible order or organization

2. completely unordered and unpredictable and confusing

3. of or relating to a sensitive dependence on initial conditions

  Familiarity information: CHAOTIC used as an adjective is uncommon.

 Dictionary entry details 

• CHAOTIC (adjective)

Sense 1

Meaning:

Lacking a visible order or organization

Synonyms:

chaotic; helter-skelter

Similar:

disorganised; disorganized (lacking order or methodical arrangement or function)

Sense 2

Meaning:

Completely unordered and unpredictable and confusing

Synonyms:

chaotic; disorderly

Similar:

wild (marked by extreme lack of restraint or control)

Derivation:

chaos (a state of extreme confusion and disorder)

Sense 3

Meaning:

Of or relating to a sensitive dependence on initial conditions

Classified under:

Relational adjectives (pertainyms)

Pertainym:

chaos ((physics) a dynamical system that is extremely sensitive to its initial conditions)

Derivation:

chaos ((physics) a dynamical system that is extremely sensitive to its initial conditions)

Domain category:

physics (the science of matter and energy and their interactions)

 Context examples 

When Hubble photographed the galaxy, astronomers expected to see a chaotic ball of stars formed through galaxies merging together.

(Massive Dead Disk Galaxy Challenges Theories of Galaxy Evolution, The Titi Tudorancea Bulletin)

Ataxia associated with chaotic multidirectional conjugate eye movements secondary to metastatic tumors to cerebellum.

(Paraneoplastic Opsoclonus Ataxia, NCI Thesaurus)

“A chaotic case, my dear Watson,” said Holmes over an evening pipe.

(His Last Bow, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

It’s also possible the new moon of October 27 might have caused chaotic circumstances.

(AstrologyZone.com, by Susan Miller)

The nebula's chaotic structure suggests that the star shed its mass episodically.

(Hubble Views a Colorful Demise of a Sun-like Star, NASA)

Instead of intermittently contracting, the atria quiver continuously in a chaotic pattern, causing a totally irregular, often tachycardia ventricular rate.

(Chronic Atrial Fibrillation, NCI Thesaurus)

Mercedes screamed, cried, laughed, and manifested the chaotic abandonment of hysteria.

(The Call of the Wild, by Jack London)

The boy early developed a mechanical genius which delighted his father and distracted his mother, for he tried to imitate every machine he saw, and kept the nursery in a chaotic condition, with his 'sewinsheen', a mysterious structure of string, chairs, clothespins, and spools, for wheels to go 'wound and wound'.

(Little Women, by Louisa May Alcott)

An arrhythmia in which minute areas of the atrial myocardium are in various uncoordinated stages of depolarization and repolarization; instead of intermittently contracting, the atria quiver continuously in a chaotic pattern, causing a totally irregular, often rapid ventricular rate.

(Atrial Fibrillation, Food and Drug Administration)

Kane and his team also observed that unlike Earth, which experiences climatic changes such as an ice age because of slow variations in its orbit around the sun, Wolf 1061c's orbit changes at a much faster rate, which could mean the climate there could be quite chaotic.

(Searching for Life on Wolf 1061 Exoplanet, The Titi Tudorancea Bulletin)