haphazard [L16th] This is composed of Middle English hap (see happy) ‘luck, fortune’ (from Old Norse happ) and hazard [ME], which was initially a gambling game played with two dice in which the chances are complicated by arbitrary rules. Hazard reached English in the Middle Ages through Arabic, Spanish, and French, but goes right back to Persian or Turkish zar ‘dice’. In the 16th century hazard came to mean ‘a chance’ and ‘a risk of loss or harm’.