ad hoc

[ ad hok; Latin ahd hohk ]

adverb

1. for the special purpose or end presently under consideration:

   a committee formed ad hoc to deal with the issue.

adjective

1. concerned or dealing with a specific subject, purpose, or end:

   The ad hoc committee disbanded after making its final report.

ad hoc

/ æd ˈhɒk /

adjective

1. for a particular purpose only; lacking generality or justification

   an ad hoc committee

   an ad hoc decision

ad hoc

1. A phrase describing something created especially for a particular occasion: “We need an ad hoc committee to handle this new problem immediately.” From Latin , meaning “toward this (matter).”

Word History and Origins

Origin of ad hoc¹

First recorded in 1550–60; from Latin ad hōc “for this, to this”

Word History and Origins

Origin of ad hoc¹

Latin, literally: to this

Idioms and Phrases

For the special purpose or end at hand; also, by extension, improvised or impromptu. The term, Latin for “to this,” is most often used for committees established for a specific purpose, as in The committee was formed ad hoc to address health insurance problems . The term is also used as an adjective ( An ad hoc committee was formed ), and has given rise to the noun adhocism for the tendency to use temporary, provisional, or improvised methods to deal with a particular problem. [Early 1600s]

Example Sentences

They said they carried out an "urgent preliminary investigation" on Sunday which suggested the door policy had been changed "ad hoc".

From BBC

Rather than an ad hoc workaround, pen and paper systems could be something staff practise using from time to time so that they can switch away from their computers seamlessly if required.

From BBC

Most members of the ad hoc Assembly Petroleum and Gasoline Supply Committee were noncommittal on the storage issue.

From Los Angeles Times

“Those investments have often been made in a very ad hoc manner.”

From Los Angeles Times

Investigative reporter Seymour Hersh related that Straussians filled the Pentagon’s ad hoc Office of Special Plans, and had bulldozed the government’s intelligence agencies in order to cherry-pick dubious evidence to fit their preconceived notions.

From Salon

Related Words

• impromptu
• provisional

More About Ad Hoc

What does ad hoc mean?

Something ad hoc is put together on the fly for one narrow, pressing, or special purpose. For example, a government committee arranged to address one specific problem would be an ad hoc committee. More loosely, it can mean “spontaneous,” “unplanned,” or “on the spot.”

Ad hoc is one of those Latin phrases commonly found in academic, law, and government contexts. It literally means “for this (thing).”

Where does ad hoc come from?

English borrowed the Latin phrase ad hoc in the mid 1500s, when the expression was quickly being adopted into legal and judicial writings.

Ad hoc spreads as a term in such contexts in the 1800s. A Louisiana Code of Practice for civil law from 1839, for example, lists the various situations where a person, such as a minor, may be assigned what is called a curator ad hoc, a “caretaker for this purpose.” An 1869 judicial report from the state of New York, as another instance, describes forming ad hoc committees by the courts to investigate specific matters.

Around the same time, ad hoc was spreading to other areas. The phrase ad hoc hypothesis began to appear in scientific writing. An ad hoc hypothesis is basically a scientific excuse, a logical fallacy. It’s when someone makes up a new complication to brush off evidence against their claim—like if you said there’s a little green alien following you around, and when everyone asked where it was, you said that only you could see it.

Of course, not all ad hoc hypotheses are out of this world. An 1894 article on color perception points out how two of the common theories of the time relied on an extra, unproven ad hoc hypothesis about the vibration of light waves. Today, there’s even a festival dedicated to ad hoc hypotheses, where scientists can blow off steam by making stuff up.

In 1970, Alvin Toffler, the author of Future Shock, proposed that ad hoc organizations had some real benefits. Riffing on political terms like democracy, Toffler popularized the word adhocracy (from a slightly earlier coinage in 1966) to describe a kind of flexible organizational structure that could replace bureaucracy.

Six years later, adhocracy was discussed in a business book aimed at administrators. An entire book on the subject followed in 1990, and the topic became popular again in 2015 as an organizational model for structuring businesses.

In computing, an ad hoc network is a network of computers temporarily connected directly to other computers without a router or hub. Ad hoc networks were discussed in a communications journal in 1994, and there is currently an entire journal dedicated to the topic.

How is ad hoc used in real life?

You’re often going to see ad hoc describing government committees and judges, which are formed for very special purposes. Most often you’ll see it preceding what it modifies, e.g., an ad hoc judge, but especially in legal settings, following it: judges ad hoc.

Nakuru County Governor Lee Kinyanjui appearing before Senate Ad-hoc Committee investigating the #SolaiDam tragedy engage our senior Parliament reporter @edkabasa for more updates ^MK pic.twitter.com/rM1WylPlwx

— KBC Channel1 News (@KBCChannel1) July 18, 2018

You’ll also see ad hoc in everyday settings, like an ad hoc train stop (unscheduled), an ad hoc job (working as needed), or an ad hoc movie set (improvised).

Any Manchester based freelance web designers out there? Get in touch with @bamboo_mcr if you're looking for some ad hoc project work 💻

— Freelance Folk (@FreelanceFolk) July 17, 2018

Ad hoc can be used to criticize an organization or event for being a little too loose or improvisational, though. The criticism is that it’s unstructured and wasn’t thought out.

More examples of ad hoc:

“The Registrar of Delhi University said on Monday that no assurance had been given or could be given by the Vice-Chancellor regarding the continuation of ad hoc teachers in the new session.”

—The Hindu, June 2018

“Mammals sleep because they hate themselves. Human intelligence evolved thanks to alcohol. Fish are stupid because they’d be too sad if they knew how boring their lives were. These are a few of the asinine arguments from BAHfest, the festival of bad ad hoc hypotheses—or as the organizers put it “a celebration of well-argued and thoroughly researched but completely incorrect scientific theories.”

—David Shultz, Science, October 2017