losowo

Losowo is an adverb in Polish meaning “randomly” or “by chance.” It describes actions or outcomes that occur without a fixed pattern, plan, or bias. In contrast to przypadkowo (by accident), losowo emphasizes a lack of systematic order, often in contexts involving sampling, selection, or generation processes.

Etymology: Losowo is formed from the adjective losowy, meaning random or arbitrary, itself derived from los, fate or destiny, historically associated with the idea of a lottery. The suffix -owo turns the adjective into an adverb.

Usage: The word is common in everyday language and in technical registers. Examples: losowo wybrano 100 uczestników; losowo generowane dane. In programming, one may refer to a losowy generator liczb or to algorithms that perform sampling losowo. In statistics, zmienna losowa denotes a random variable, while proces losowy denotes a stochastic process.

Nuances: Losowo does not imply moral neutrality or error; it conveys the absence of predictable order, often in relation to probabilistic models and randomness. It can appear alongside przypadkowo in casual speech, but przypadkowo emphasizes happenstance or error, whereas losowo stresses deliberate randomness or random selection.

See also: randomness, probability, random number generator, sampling, stochastic process.