It's Merriam-Webster's word of the day for March 30th.

Today's word is haphazard spelled H-A-P-H-A-Z-A-R-D.

H-H-H-A-R-D. H-H-H-H-A-R-D,

haphazard is an adjective.

Something haphazard has no apparent plan, order, or direction. Here's the word used in a sentence from the

Shadow Cabinet by Juno Dawson. It felt like winter for the first time that year, and Theo remembered how much she preferred the dark, the secrecy of the season.

They walked single file up against the haphazard stone wall, wary of cars that sped up the country lane, an owl

hooted somewhere close by, and they stopped to listen, sitting on a section of broken wall.

The HAP in haphazard comes from an English word that means happening, as well as chance

or fortune.

HAP in turn comes from the old Norse word HAP HAP, meaning good luck.

Perhaps it's no accident that Hazard also has its own connotations of chance and luck.

While it now refers commonly to something

that presents danger, at one time it referred

to a dice game similar to craps.

The name ultimately comes from the Arabic word, alapazard, meaning the dye.

Hapazard first entered English as a noun, meaning chance, in the 16th century,

and soon afterward, was being used as an adjective to describe things with

no apparent logic or order. With your word of the day I'm Peter Sokolosky.

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