vagary
/vəˈɡɛɚ.i/noun
vagary is spelled V-A-G-A-R-Y. The wrong spelling people search most is vaguery: about 70 Bing searches a month in the United States (September 2025 to August 2026), about 2 in 10 of all searches for the word. Vagary is a noun meaning “An erratic, unpredictable occurrence or action”. The plural of vagary is vagaries.
How many letters and syllables are in vagary?
| Letters | 6: V-A-G-A-R-Y |
|---|---|
| Syllables | 3 (from its American pronunciation) |
| In writing | about once in every 68 million words; the 258,950th most frequent word form |
| Wrong spellings searched | 1; the most searched, vaguery, about 70 Bing searches a month (all of them) |
Sources: letters and syllables from the English Wiktionary's hyphenation or pronunciation and the CMU Pronouncing Dictionary; written frequency: wordfreq 3.1 (a 2021 snapshot of Wikipedia, subtitles, news, books, web text and social media); Bing searches in the United States: the average month from September 2025 to August 2026 (Microsoft Advertising keyword data through DataForSEO, read September 30, 2026).
How do you spell vagary?
Vagary is spelled V-A-G-A-R-Y. One wrong spelling is searched or written often enough to measure; together they are about 2 in 10 of the searches for vagary in either form.
Bing searches in the United States: the average month from September 2025 to August 2026 (Microsoft Advertising keyword data through DataForSEO, read September 30, 2026). Wrong spellings are taken from Wiktionary entries tagged "misspelling" and its obsolete or nonstandard forms, Wikipedia's Lists of common misspellings and the codespell dictionary, then measured. The proofreader's marks show the change that corrects each one.
How common is vagary?
Vagary appears about once in every 68 million words in written English, the 258,950th most frequent word form in the list.
Source: written frequency: wordfreq 3.1 (a 2021 snapshot of Wikipedia, subtitles, news, books, web text and social media).
How do you pronounce vagary?
- /vəˈɡɛɚ.i/
- /ˈveɪɡəɹi/
Vagary has 3 syllables (counted from its American pronunciation in the CMU Pronouncing Dictionary).
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract). Recordings: En-us-vagary.ogg, Wikimedia Commons (author and licence on each file's page).
Forms of vagary
- vagaries plural
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).
What does vagary mean?
The meanings the English Wiktionary records, quoted as written there (source below).
noun
- 1
An erratic, unpredictable occurrence or action.
- 2
Something vague.
to speak in vagaries
- 3
An impulsive or illogical desire; a caprice or whim.
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).
Vagary in Spanish, French, German and Portuguese
| Language | Words |
|---|---|
| French | extravagance , caprice |
| German | Unwägbarkeit , Laune |
| Portuguese | extravagância , capricho |
| Spanish | extravagancia, rareza , antojo, capricho |
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract). Translations are Wiktionary's, by sense; a linked word has its own PlainSpell page.
Where does vagary come from?
From Italian vagare (“wander”) and/or its source Latin vagārī (“to wander”), from Latin vagus (“wandering”). Later apparently reinterpreted in English as vague + -ery but without changing the spelling. By surface analysis, Latin vag(us) + -ary.
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).