The word “random” has never sounded right to me. It hits the ear in an awkward way and for whatever reason it makes me think that you were just too lazy to come up with a more specific word. But there are bigger problems with this commonly used term.

To begin, it has too many different uses. First, it can mean unexpected: “That was random.” It can also mean unusual, as in people you don’t see very often or perhaps don’t know very well: “There were so many randoms at the party.” Finally, it can mean just plain weird: “You’re so random!” Sure, most of the time you know which one the speaker is trying to convey, but not always. For example, if a friend says, “We were at this random house party,” does that mean they found it by accident, or it was full of people they didn’t expect, or there was something about it that made it weird? All of these? None? Who knows?

It will always sound better and be easier to understand if you substitute a more specific word for random, or if you just cut it out of the sentence. And that’s the second problem with using random: it’s often unnecessary. For example, you don’t need to start a sentence with “We went to this random bar” and then presumably explain why it was random with whatever follows. Saying “We went to this bar” and then explaining why it was random is just as meaningful.

Maybe my hatred of random stems from my frustration with people speaking like they’re on the Internet in real life. I’m all for slang, but pseudo-words like random becoming a mainstay in everyday conversation only homogenizes our sentences and shrinks our vocabulary.