a. (UN-1 7 b.)
In frequent use from c. 1880.
1840. The Dial, I. No. 1, July, 3, ‘The Editors to the Reader.’ All criticism should be poetic; unpredictable; superseding, as every new thought does, all foregone thoughts, and making a new light on the whole world.
1844. Lowell, Poems, 54. And yet the next development of Genius is as unpredictable as the glory of the next sunset.
1857. M. Pattison, Ess. (1889), II. 405. The constant tendency of discovery [is] to reduce to order classes of facts, once thought irregular and unpredictable.
1874. J. Sully, Sensation & Intuition, 113. The many chances of some unpredictable accident.
