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

In person, she felt like a force, her kaleidoscopic wardrobe hardly a match for her natural energy.

From Los Angeles Times

The score is built around a single chord that over an hour explodes into kaleidoscopic, supernatural-sounding upper harmonic pitches associated with each note.

From Los Angeles Times

The show burrows into the character’s psyche while surveying the mixed blessing of marriage in a kaleidoscopic revue that boasts one of Sondheim’s most irresistible scores.

From Los Angeles Times

There, Garten said, she found peaches that tasted like peach jam, a kaleidoscopic array of cheeses and crispy, handmade French baguettes.

From Salon

And yet Native music, kaleidoscopically varied across the country and its many tribes and heritages, remains only rarely heard, and so only vaguely understood and appreciated, by non-Natives.

From New York Times

Related Words

• motley
• psychedelic