kaleidoscopic

[ kuh-lahy-duh-skop-ik ]

adjective

1. of, relating to, or created by a kaleidoscope.
2. changing form, pattern, color, etc., in a manner suggesting a kaleidoscope.
3. continually shifting from one set of relations to another; rapidly changing:

   the kaleidoscopic events of the past year.

   Synonyms: variable, protean, changeable

Other Words From

• ka·leido·scopi·cal·ly adverb

Word History and Origins

Origin of kaleidoscopic¹

First recorded in 1840–50; kaleidoscope + -ic

Example Sentences

Yet in the years and decades afterward, I’ve seen flowers return in kaleidoscopic carpets.

From Outside Online

The spectacular kaleidoscopic effects are the result of charged particles from the Sun being dumped into the Earth's magnetosphere, where they collide with oxygen and nitrogen molecules—an interaction that excites those molecules and makes them glow.

From Ars Technica

The Vox Book Club spent April reading Akwaeke Emezi’s The Death of Vivek Oji, a ferocious and kaleidoscopic novel about the mysterious death of a young man in Nigeria.

From Vox

In Akwaeki Emezi’s ferocious and kaleidoscopic novel, the real mystery is whether Vivek truly lived.

From Vox

That was the improbable genesis of “Midnight Cowboy,” the 1969 classic of two outcasts who find heartbreak and hope in the kaleidoscopic jungle of New York City.

From Washington Post

The kaleidoscopic mobile changes no matter how you look at it—or where you stand.

From The Daily Beast

It was both linear and kaleidoscopic, if that makes any sense.

From The Daily Beast

His Cezannes show the Frenchman at his most kaleidoscopic, breaking the world into shards.

From The Daily Beast

A kaleidoscopic installation of 650 quilts spirals up to the ceiling in a grand display.

From The Daily Beast

But Walter Harkness, standing at the window, stared out from troubled, frowning eyes that saw nothing of the kaleidoscopic scene.

From Project Gutenberg

Boston's religious history is most interesting, although almost kaleidoscopic in its changes.

From Project Gutenberg

The kaleidoscopic view came so fast that Anders had trouble sorting his new impressions.

From Project Gutenberg

The whole cloak making trade of New York presents, for an outside observer, the kaleidoscopic interest of a population not static.

From Project Gutenberg

In the swift and kaleidoscopic changes which occur in (p. 340) world politics, the friend of to-day may be the enemy of to-morrow.

From Project Gutenberg

Related Words

• motley
• psychedelic