hit-or-miss 1 of 2

adjective

ˌhit-ər-ˈmis How to pronounce hit-or-miss (audio)
Definition of hit-or-missnext
as in random
lacking a definite plan, purpose, or pattern your hit-or-miss schedule for taking your medication is going to land you in the hospital again

Synonyms & Similar Words

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Antonyms & Near Antonyms

hit or miss

2 of 2

adverb

as in randomly
without definite aim, direction, rule, or method I was learning Spanish hit or miss, mostly just by hearing my friends speak it

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Antonyms & Near Antonyms

Example Sentences

Examples are automatically compiled from online sources to show current usage. Read More Opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback.
Recent Examples of hit-or-miss
Adjective
While the storms have been hit-or-miss about who is actually seeing the wet weather, Southeast Michigan has another chance on Wednesday, where some of us could see some action. — Karen Carter, CBS News, 12 Aug. 2026 Way of the Sword on my Switch 2, despite Capcom's past titles offering hit-or-miss performance on Nintendo's newest console. — Zackery Cuevas, PC Magazine, 6 Aug. 2026
Adverb
Of course, ports can be hit or miss. — ArsTechnica, 28 May 2026 Flow State is a new gameplay dynamic and players were hit or miss on the new feature. — Brian Mazique, Forbes.com, 18 May 2026 See All Example Sentences for hit-or-miss
Recent Examples of Synonyms for hit-or-miss
  1. random
  2. randomly
  3. scattered
  4. arbitrary
  5. erratic
Adjective
  • Raman is now easily scoring off of Bass mishaps, like the mayor’s response to the Lineage warehouse fire and her random broadside against street vendors during a debate in Sherman Oaks last month.
    — Gustavo Arellano, Los Angeles Times, 4 Sep. 2026
  • Several Chinese research teams developed and tested the coherent routing system for bucket-brigade quantum random access memory, or QRAM, Science and Technology Daily reported on Wednesday.
    — Atharva Gosavi, Interesting Engineering, 3 Sep. 2026
Definition of random
Adverb
  • Presumably, his unclear methodology boiled down to randomly sampling primes and dividing each from RSA-260 until one of them divided evenly.
    — Peter Hall, Scientific American, 4 Sep. 2026
  • In another, they were instructed to answer the questions randomly.
    — Alexander Puutio, Forbes.com, 28 Aug. 2026
Definition of randomly
Adjective
  • The right words can turn scattered details into a workable plan.
    — Tarot.com, The Orlando Sentinel, 27 Aug. 2026
  • The scattered rain on Tuesday morning was simply not widespread or heavy enough to provide meaningful relief for the ongoing fires or drought conditions.
    — Lauren Bostwick, CBS News, 25 Aug. 2026
Definition of scattered
Adjective
  • While some of the color contrasts do articulate planar shifts, such as the candy-stripe lips (red for upper, pink for lower), many of the touches are arbitrary splotches that neither bolster a shape nor set another off.
    — Zachary Fine, New Yorker, 31 Aug. 2026
  • The choices of what to put in each episode — and when to cut from one timeline to another — have sometimes felt arbitrary, and have often disrupted the story’s overall flow.
    — Noel Murray, Vulture, 28 Aug. 2026
Definition of arbitrary
Adjective
  • The Salt River's first major dam, Roosevelt Dam, was completed in 1911 in an effort to tame erratic flows and wrangle its water for the nascent farming communities downstream.
    — Alex Hager, NPR, 31 Aug. 2026
  • The sibling drama, meanwhile, rather fades out of view amid these loftier goings-on; the film’s narrative begins to feel devised by the old parlor game Consequences, repeatedly wrenched in erratic new directions.
    — Guy Lodge, Variety, 31 Aug. 2026
Definition of erratic

Browse Nearby Words

hit (on or upon)
hit-or-miss
hit or miss
See all Nearby Words

Cite this Entry

“Hit-or-miss.” Merriam-Webster.com Thesaurus, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/thesaurus/hit-or-miss. Accessed 6 Sep. 2026.

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