Noun

(en noun)

Mental acceptance of a claim as likely true.

*{{quote-magazine, date=2013-12-06, author=(George Monbiot)

, volume=189, issue=26, page=48, magazine=(The Guardian Weekly) , title= Why I'm eating my words on veganism – again , passage=The belief that there is no conflict between [livestock] farming and arable production also seems to be unfounded: by preventing the growth of trees and other deep vegetation in the hills and by compacting the soil, grazing animals cause a cycle of flash floods and drought, sporadically drowning good land downstream and reducing the supply of irrigation water.}}

Faith or trust in the reality of something; often based upon one's own reasoning, trust in a claim, desire of actuality, and/or evidence considered.

(countable) Something believed.

(uncountable) The quality or state of believing.

(uncountable) Religious faith.

(in the plural) One's religious or moral convictions.

Noun

(vagaries)

An erratic, unpredictable occurrence or action.

* 1871 , , At Last: A Christmas In The West Indies , ch. 8:

It now turns out that the Pitch Lake, like most other things, owes its appearance on the surface to no convulsion or vagary at all, but to a most slow, orderly, and respectable process of nature, by which buried vegetable matter, which would have become peat, and finally brown coal, in a temperate climate, becomes, under the hot tropic soil, asphalt and oil.

An impulsive or illogical desire; a caprice or whim.

* 1905 , , War of the Classes , Preface:

And then came the day when my socialism grew respectable,—still a vagary of youth, it was held, but romantically respectable.