[Math] Arbitrary’s Meaning

Question

I am not a native English speaker nor have I studied Physics in English before. I came across this word "Arbitrary" when I read a Mathematics for Physics book. I don't understand what it means. Here is the sentence "where $A$ and $B$ are arbitrary scalars."

Answer 1

Arbitrary means "undetermined; not assigned a specific value." For example, the statement $x+x=2x$ is true for arbitrary values of $x\in\mathbb R$, but the statement $x+x=2$ is not true for arbitrary values of $x$ (only for a specific value: $x=1$).