a. [f. as prec. + -OUS.]
1. Marked by vicissitudes; subject to various or frequent changes of fortune.
1833. Goodman, in Cobbett’s Weekly Political Register, 4 May, 297/1. Gentlemen, when we look back at the perils through which the Hercules of politics has passed, in his vicissitudinous career, every feeling is lost in gratitude to the people of Oldham.
1846. Worcester (citing Q. Rev.).
1853. J. Stevenson in Trans. Ch. Historians Eng., II. 227. In this mode was the king’s administration conducted during the whole of his vicissitudinous life.
1865. Reader, 23 Sept., 335/1. His career has been vicissitudinous in the highest degree.
1891. Sat. Rev., 4 July, 2/1. A second Oxford innings, which, though ‘vicissitudinous,’ almost equalled the first Cambridge total.
2. Of a person: That has experienced changes of fortune or circumstances.
1856. Hawthorne, Eng. Note-Bks. (1870), II. 189. An Englishman … who suggests himself as a kind of contrast to this warlike and vicissitudinous backwoodsman.
