(a.) Having no certain course; roving about without a fixed destination; wandering; moving; -- hence, applied to the planets as distinguished from the fixed stars.
(a.) Deviating from a wise of the common course in opinion or conduct; eccentric; strange; queer; as, erratic conduct.
(a.) Irregular; changeable.
(n.) One who deviates from common and accepted opinions; one who is eccentric or preserve in his intellectual character.
(n.) A rogue.
(n.) 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.
Example Sentences:
(1) This erratic course renders difficult assessment of the efficacy of methods of treatment.
(2) As trigger sensitivity was decreased within its usual range, a marked and progressive ventilator response delay occurred which was associated with erratic changes in functional residual capacity as well as dyspnea and tachypnea.
(3) Obstacles to successful treatment include an erratic schedule, mistrust of authority, and uncooperative or aggressive behavior.
(4) In the wake of a second fatal police shooting in the St Louis area after the death of Michael Brown , concerned citizens are asking why officers had to kill Kajieme Powell, a 25-year-old man who was holding a knife and “behaving erratically.” They want to know why officers don’t shoot someone like Powell in the leg or the arm, rather than aiming for vital organs, or why they don’t just use a less lethal weapon, like a Taser.
(5) We attribute the persistence of infection in our patient to erratic usage of antituberculous drugs.
(6) Coronary blood flow and coronary perfusion pressure were significantly correlated during the administration of lignocaine; bupivacaine had erratic effects on coronary blood flow and no correlation between coronary blood flow and coronary perfusion pressure was seen.
(7) Flynn’s subsequent penchant for inflammatory, erratic and even bigoted statements left few, particularly in security circles, willing to defend him.
(8) The president of the European parliament, Martin Schulz, reflecting the deep anger felt in Brussels at the erratic negotiating tactics adopted by Tsipras and Varoufakis, said Greek voters should blame Tsipras for bringing the country to its knees.
(9) Cells in optimal (5 x 10(-9) M) but uniform concentrations of N-formyl-methionyl-leucyl-phenylalanine (FMLP) polarized well and showed a 'persistent random walk' type of locomotion, whereas in supraoptimal concentrations (10(-7) M), the cells took erratic paths and polarized poorly, suggesting that monocytes cannot develop an anteroposterior polarity if hit by ligand molecules at many points on the cell surface simultaneously.
(10) It is perhaps not surprising that self-diagnosis and self-medication are common and follow-up attendance is erratic.
(11) As far back as 2008, the Wall Street Journal was running front-page pieces , beginning: "Major banks are contributing to the erratic behaviour of a crucial global lending benchmark".
(12) The fact that it failed is related to the atomised society left behind by 40 years of the most brutal and erratic of dictatorships.
(13) At lower levels the results were somewhat more erratic due to inaccuracies of the various methods at low concentrations.
(14) At any rate, the only sparse range of body expressions, the smallness and preference of night activity of these animals and the erratic occurrence of essential behaviour patterns make the investigations more difficult.
(15) It has been encouraged by Trump’s often erratic, unfocused behaviour , and the resulting opportunities and dangers arising from weakened American global leadership.
(16) Though absorption of ampicillin from capsules was often erratic, its bioavailability was similar in normal and cirrhotic subjects.
(17) Moreover, the emotional climate of adolescence, which requires affiliation with peer groups, and a distancing from authority figures such as doctors and parents, is often associated with a deterioration in drug and dietary compliance and with erratic clinic attendance.
(18) I learned that the hard way: when I was younger, I played the part of the erratic, irascible drunk in order to have something to write about.
(19) Once well-paid, stable work with decent terms and conditions is gradually being replaced by minimum-wage, erratic jobs.
(20) Psychiatric patients may also be at special risk for the development of digitoxicity because of erratic drug taking, electrolyte imbalance or increased autonomic tone.
Sporadic
Definition:
(a.) Occuring singly, or apart from other things of the same kind, or in scattered instances; separate; single; as, a sporadic fireball; a sporadic case of disease; a sporadic example of a flower.
Example Sentences:
(1) Mutational mosaicism was used as a developmental model to analyze 1,500 sporadic and 179 familial cases of retinoblastoma from the world literature.
(2) TR was classified as follows: severe (massive systolic opacification and persistence of the microbubbles in the IVC for at least 20 seconds); moderate (moderate systolic opacification lasting less than 20 seconds); mild (slight systolic opacification lasting less than 10 seconds); insignificant TR (sporadic appearance of the contrast medium into the IVC).
(3) High mortality, severe destruction of pancreatic B-cells and presence of sporadic mononuclear infiltrations in islets and around excretory ducts were observed.
(4) Progressive sporadic myopathy in association with Down's syndrome has not been reported previously.
(5) After examining the cases reported in literature (Sacks, Barabas, Beighton Sykes), they point out that, contrary to what is generally believed, the syndrome is not rare and cases, sporadic or familial, of recurrent episodes of spontaneous rupture of the intestine and large vessels or peripheral arteries are frequent.
(6) This study examines the morphology of sporadic congenital microphthalmia in 1-day-old chicks, with particular emphasis on the neural retina.
(7) 18 patients with typical sporadic Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS) were investigated by the Motor Accuracy and Speed Test (MAST) and 18 healthy age- and-sex-matched volunteers, acted as controls.
(8) Instead, we suffer sporadic exhibitions, which they call consultation.
(9) Fairly frequently the patients complained about mucosal dryness and sporadically about dyspeptic symptoms, but these symptoms were not disturbing the course of the treatment.
(10) Women with a history of recurrent spontaneous abortions (repeaters) are compared with women who have had live births and no spontaneous abortions (multiparae) and women who have had live births and only one spontaneous abortion (sporadics) to identify characteristics of the women and their abortuses that might predict subsequent fetal loss.
(11) DNA studies were undertaken following 53 requests from pregnant women at risk for Duchenne and Becker muscular dystrophy, including 32 in whom there was only 1 affected individual in the family (sporadic cases).
(12) To date we have analysed members of 28 DMD families (10 familial, 18 sporadic) and six BMD families (four familial, two sporadic) with the closely linked pERT probes 87-1, 87-8, and 87-15 (DXS164).
(13) The autonomic centers in the brain-stem and cerebellum were systematically affected in both the sporadic and the hereditary cases.
(14) After intrauterine inoculation E. coli was isolated from the uterus up to 30 days, and sporadically from the kidneys and urinary bladder, but not from the liver.
(15) In sporadic cases this may have serious implications.
(16) Associated non-urogenital anomalies, although more frequent in sporadic cases, have been reported in HRA.
(17) Six patients without abnormal clones had more than 20% metaphases with random heteroploidy and sporadic structural anomalies.
(18) AIDS, having presented itself as a sporadic and ill defined entity, remained unrecognized in Central Africa until the outset of the present outbreak.
(19) The time-related incidence of these cells entities--the appearance of "dusk" and "bright" cells at 5 min, transitory domination of "bright" cells and the nadir of "dusk" cells at 20 min, sporadic recognition of "bright" cells, lack of "dusk" cells at 45 min and the absence of both cell forms at 180 min--displayed that LP-reactive response promptly appeared and rapidly ceased.
(20) The results of virological investigations on 492 sporadic cases with a clinical diagnosis compatible with an enterovirus etiology studied in Lombardy between 1965 and 1972 are reported.