What's the difference between idiosyncrasy and vagary?

Idiosyncrasy


Definition:

  • (n.) A peculiarity of physical or mental constitution or temperament; a characteristic belonging to, and distinguishing, an individual; characteristic susceptibility; idiocrasy; eccentricity.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) Since 1887, winter green is claimed to have caused dermatitis and to have been responsible for "idiosyncrasy".
  • (2) Until now it has not been possible to define the enzymatic abnormality which could explain this metabolic type of idiosyncrasy.
  • (3) Factors limiting the interpretability and generalizability of these findings are discussed with particular reference to sample size and idiosyncrasies.
  • (4) The mechanisms involve toxicity, idiosyncrasy, allergy, or a combination.
  • (5) Cincophen induces hepatic necrosis through a hypersensitivity or metabolic idiosyncrasy mechanism with histologic abnormalities similar to those due to isoniazid, anticonvulsants, halothane and methyldopa.
  • (6) There was distinct host idiosyncrasy in the pattern of estimated counts of these five types.
  • (7) This method involves building a face with clay or other suitable material on to a skull or its cast, taking into account appropriate facial thickness measurements together with information provided by anthropologists such as approximate age, sex, race and other individual idiosyncrasies.
  • (8) To test whether this diversity was a geographic idiosyncrasy, we analyzed 25 cervical biopsy specimens from Brazil.
  • (9) This is further complicated by the added impact of pharmacokinetic idiosyncrasies displayed by children, coupled with the routine pitfalls of therapeutic drug monitoring seen in any patient population.
  • (10) In particular, caries diagnosis and restorative treatment planning are subject to considerable idiosyncrasies.
  • (11) In order to identify generalities and detect idiosyncrasies, analyses were carried out using RNase P RNAs from three phylogenetically diverse organisms: Bacillus subtilis, Chromatium vinosum and Escherichia coli.
  • (12) Review: Amazon’s Fire Phone offers new gimmicks, old platform growing pains - Ars Technica Past tablet success isn't enough to guarantee a win for Amazon in the high-end smartphone game for Andrew Cunningham for Ars Technica: The problem is that even if all of your media lives in Amazon's cloud, phones running iOS or Google-approved Android can access all of it without the third-party app gap or FireOS' idiosyncrasies (the exception is Instant Video on Android, though rumour has it that Amazon will be releasing that app soon).
  • (13) It is curious that no antiarrhythmic drug seems to be statistically less exposed to this type of complication which may result from phenomena of toxicity or idiosyncrasy.
  • (14) I write a personal blog and it often features my sons: their weird enthusiasms, their idiosyncrasies, their repeated requests that I look at a picture of a man selling advertising space on his neck goitre in the Ripley's Believe it or Not!
  • (15) South Africa’s idiosyncrasies, from party politics to the high crime rate, provided regular material.
  • (16) His descriptions – of battlefields or mushroom-picking or meals – are full of exactly the right amount of idiosyncrasy and detail.
  • (17) However, since the hepatotoxicity appears to involve an element of idiosyncrasy, the primary defect in some cases may be an inherited or acquired deficiency in the drug's beta-oxidation.
  • (18) Since inhibition of cyclo-oxygenase precipitates asthmatic attacks in patients with aspirin idiosyncrasy, we have evaluated the effects of pharmacological inhibition of the next enzyme in arachidonic acid cascade, i.e., thromboxane synthetase.
  • (19) Lithium discontinuation produced a significant increase in associational productivity and a demonstrable increase in associative idiosyncrasy, and restoration of lithium dose significantly reversed both effects.
  • (20) The variability among qualitative judgments of odors which makes it difficult to construct reliable classifications may depend on cultural or personal idiosyncrasies.

Vagary


Definition:

  • (n.) A wandering or strolling.
  • (n.) Hence, a wandering of the thoughts; a wild or fanciful freak; a whim; a whimsical purpose.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) Dictated by underlying physicochemical constraints, deceived at times by the lulling tones of the siren entropy, and constantly vulnerable to the vagaries of other more pervasive forms of biological networking and information transfer encoded in the genes of virus and invading microorganisms, protein biorecognition in higher life forms, and particularly in mammals, represents the finely tuned molecular avenues for the genome to transfer its information to the next generation.
  • (2) Psychiatry is criticized for imprecise diagnosis, conceptual vagaries, jargon, therapeutic impotence and class bias.
  • (3) The issue of generic equivalence of topical steroids is discussed, with particular emphasis on the vagaries of the vasoconstriction assay.
  • (4) During the past 5-year period from 1986 to 1991, a total of 54 patients received living-related renal allograft and has been managed with vagaries of cyclosporin A (CYA) immunosuppressive regimen.
  • (5) Tsakalotos believes the anti-austerity government speaks for the growing numbers across Europe who, subjected to the brutal vagaries of the market, feel excluded from decision-making.
  • (6) To attempt less would allow this country's health care system to go down any road the vagaries of our political process take it.
  • (7) "You should look at it as a hedge against the vagaries."
  • (8) When employed in the direct imaging of chemiluminescent blots, the charge-coupled device can provide equal or better sensitivity than that obtained by indirect methods using film, with the additional advantages of wide dynamic range and freedom from the vagaries of film processing.
  • (9) It was ever thus for the Kurds, their destiny as a people shaped less by their own struggles than by the vagaries of regional and international politics, particularly the great Middle Eastern upheavals they periodically produce.
  • (10) It must be conceded, however, that with the vagaries of human nature there is always likely to be greater morbidity from patients with hypothyroidism failing to take their medication regularly, than from failure by the medical attendant to make minor adjustments to the dose of thyroxine.
  • (11) When I play Minecraft with Zac he gets to explain to me the vagaries and complexities of his saved kingdoms – the traps he has built, the hidden boltholes beneath looming mountains, the crops he has planted, the eggs he has nurtured, the places he goes, the things he sees.
  • (12) The vagaries of clinical staging associated with stage A disease, as well as the previously documented progression on long-term followup (8 to 10 years) in younger (60 years old or less) patients with stage A1 prostate cancer make radical prostatectomy with its limited morbidity an acceptable treatment choice.
  • (13) The response has been to force the vagaries of clinical judgment into the programmatic algorithm.
  • (14) The major cause of discrepent results with periodic cultures was attributed to vagaries in sampling.
  • (15) Combine that with having to work two jobs, make his own lunch and rely on the vagaries of public transport, and he gets three hours' sleep a night.
  • (16) Future pensioners will also suffer – as millions of employees have shifted into "defined contribution" pension plans – dependent on the vagaries of the stock market.
  • (17) The vagaries of events, people, and places leading to the scientific review are described.
  • (18) This report outlines the experience of one center in establishing a group therapy program, discussing the "readiness" of the center, reservations of the governing board, qualifications and number of group leaders, composition of the group, time-place-duration of meetings, "open" versus "closed" structure, vagaries of obtaining participants, integration with the 24-hour telephone crisis service, problems of confidentiality, and dealing with the suicide of a group member.
  • (19) In this setting the importance of the condition lies in the vagaries of its presentation and the fact that it is eminently treatable, usually by a combination of chemotherapy and surgery.
  • (20) The difficulty in articulating a clear response to Brexit, for example, stems from the absence of common instincts on the best approach to immigration, free trade, markets, and on protecting people from the economic vagaries of globalisation without retreating into bitter rejection of the modern world.