Definitions

from The Century Dictionary.

  • Relating to the kaleidoscope; varying or variegated like the forms and colors in a kaleidoscope: as, kaleidoscopic views; kaleidoscopic combinations of color.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • adjective Of, pertaining to, or formed by, a kaleidoscope; variegated.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • adjective Of, relating to, or produced by a kaleidoscope.
  • adjective figuratively Brightly coloured and continuously changing in pattern, as if in a kaleidoscope.

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • adjective continually shifting or rapidly changing

Etymologies

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

From kaleidoscope +‎ -ic.

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Examples

  • A collection of fourteen essays that brings new meaning to the word kaleidoscopic, The Great Brain Suck more or less sets it sights on the power, pleasure and practicality of the material world.

    Kevin Morris and Glenn Altschuler: Left Brain, Lame Brain 2008

  • So kaleidoscopic is the succession of these "mothers" of Miss Edgeworth, that emotion tends to dry up under it, and even the most patient of biographers wearies a little before the duty of chronicling their various arrivals and exits.

    Maria Edgeworth 1905

  • Metaphorically, the family's lived world, how they experience at this particular cross-section of their lives, can be symbolically described as a kaleidoscopic telescoping of its past and anticipated future.

    Humanistic Nursing Josephine G. Paterson

  • But in another sense, the point of the news is to give us a kind of kaleidoscopic view of the day's events, and to show us the distinction of one day from the day before it.

    Punditry or News: Is there a Difference? 2009

  • A multitude of beautiful shapes appeared to be comprehended within its single outline; it was a kind of kaleidoscopic mystery, so rich a variety of aspects did it assume from each altered point of view, through the presentation of a different face, and the rearrangement of its peaks and pinnacles and the three battlemented towers, with the spires that shot heavenward from all three, but one loftier than its fellows.

    Our Old Home A Series of English Sketches A Series of English Sketches Nathaniel Hawthorne 1834

  • "Talking to some of the people that were there and their version of events to try and correlate it all was very interesting, a kind of kaleidoscopic bunch of experiences," Richards said.

    ! Exclaim.ca - News 2010

  • He's certainly the only one with this kind of kaleidoscopic musical ambition.

    Culture | guardian.co.uk Alexis Petridis 2010

  • The illustrations are astonishing in their detail, and Lebrun spent years of his own life photographing them, organizing a thousand of them into visual sequences, and animating them into a kind of kaleidoscopic dance of forms.

    f i l m j o u r n e y . o r g 2008

  • Then it would break, coalesce through a kind of kaleidoscopic whirl like a child's toy, into a pattern, a design almost beautiful, as if an inspired choreographer had drilled a willing and patient and hard-working troupe of dancers — a pattern, design which was trying to tell him something, say something to him urgent and important and true in that second before, already bulging with the motion and the speed, it began to disintegrate and dissolve.

    Caps gameday special: Best hockey stories ever 2010

  • "kaleidoscopic" there is much in play, and much to play for in short and medium term investment and IT decisions.

    Releases feed from RealWire 2010

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