indeterminate

Not accurately determined or determinable.

Four miles to the east of Warmington, the River Cherwell flows into Cropredy under a bridge that in 1644 was the scene of another Civil War battle - with an equally indeterminate result.

Imprecise or vague.

Not definitively or precisely determined, because of the presence of infinity or zero symbols used in any of several improper combinations.

With no genetically defined end, and thus theoretically limitless.

Not topped with some form of terminal bud.

A symbol that resembles a variable or parameter but is used purely formally and neither signifies nor is ever assigned a particular value;

1862, H. J. Stephen Smith, Report on the Theory of Numbers—Part III, Report of the 31st Meeting of the British Association for the Advancement of Science, British Association for the Advancement of Science, page 292, The form is linear, quadratic, cubic, biquadratic or quartic, quintic, &c., according to its order in respect of the indeterminates it contains; and binary, ternary, quaternary, &c., according to the number of its indeterminates. Thus x²+y² is a binary quadratic form, x³+y³+z³-3xyz is a ternary cubic form.

1892, Henry B. Fine, Kronecker and His Arithmetical Theory of the Algebraic Equation, Thomas S. Fiske, Harold Jacoby (editors), Bulletin of the New York Mathematical Society, Volume 1, New York Mathematical Society, page 179, Such a factor is therefore an integral function of x and the indeterminates u_1,u_2,…u_n with coefficients belonging to the domain of rationality (R',R,..) and may be represented by g(x,u_1,u_2,..u_n).

A symbol that resembles a variable or parameter but is used purely formally and neither signifies nor is ever assigned a particular value; (loose sense) a variable.