arbitrary

Arbitrary?
Arbitrary basically means a value or selection process that is completely whimsical, random, or otherwise valueless. In other words, if I asked you to give a dollar to anyone in the room, and you gave it to the prettiest girl to impress her, that would not be arbitrary. But if you just decided to give it to her because she was the first person you saw after I told you to pick, that would be arbitrary.

Perhaps I havent been privy to your friends' school of thought, but good literature is -anything- but arbitrary. Every word that a good author writes has a purpose, influencing the story as a whole, even if you dont see it.

A lot of people use a thesaurus arbitrarily, to get "big words" for papers, also. What they have to realize is that every synonym has a special connotation or implication, so if you use big words arbitrarily, you will sound like a fool.

Jam it back in, in the dark.