as in randomly
without definite aim, direction, rule, or method
wandered aimlessly through the forest until we were hopelessly lost
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Recent Examples of aimlessly
Quite a crowd had gathered by then, most of them the retired and the conventioneers who wander aimlessly up and down Kalakaua Avenue in the off seasons, and, when two police officers finally drove up, the crowd clapped.
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Literary Hub, 9 Dec. 2025
Owners of dogs with CCD often report that their pets pace aimlessly, bark at nothing, become anxious for no apparent reason, and accidentally relieve themselves the house.
—Rachael O'Connor, MSNBC Newsweek, 7 Dec. 2025
This way of peering at screen culture from an inexact distance, which also comes up in a scolding scene where Ethan scrolls aimlessly through something like TikTok, rankles in a play that is otherwise so precise about physical time and space.
—Jackson McHenry, Vulture, 31 Oct. 2025
The primary concern will be Melissa’s slow crawl through the central Caribbean as the storm spins aimlessly south of Hispaniola.
—Doyle Rice, USA Today, 22 Oct. 2025
The scene where groundskeeper Walter (Marcus Henderson) runs aimlessly across the lawn borders on the ridiculous, but, without getting into spoilers, the only other mistake Peele makes is the film's antagonist.
—Steven Thrash, Entertainment Weekly, 19 Oct. 2025
Others from the church wandered almost aimlessly, looking for family members.
—Georgea Kovanis, Freep.com, 5 Oct. 2025
But Brentford did not just aimlessly hammer balls forward.
—Conor O'Neill, New York Times, 29 Sep. 2025
Instead of letting our legs carry us aimlessly down the road with our minds interrogating every step, our thumbs pose too simple a question to which our smartphones are pleased to give us too simple an answer.
—Paul Greenberg, Time, 20 Sep. 2025
Recent Examples of Synonyms for aimlessly
randomly
Adverb
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In theory, people investing their money may be closely following certain events, but others could just be randomly guessing.—
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And then randomly pick people up off the street after that.—
Cite this Entry
“Aimlessly.” Merriam-Webster.com Thesaurus, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/thesaurus/aimlessly. Accessed 13 Jan. 2026.
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