You can think of capricious as a needle that will not settle. It swings one way, then the other, and nothing you can see is pushing it. That is why the word carries a complaint: the trouble is not the change itself but that nobody around it can prepare.
From the word’s history
From caprice + -ious, borrowed through Middle French capricieux from Italian capriccioso. A caprice is a sudden idea with nothing behind it, which is exactly what the modern word describes.
這個字借自中古法文 capricieux，再往上來自義大利文 capriccioso。從字面拆開看，是 caprice（一時興起的念頭）加上 -ious（帶有某種性質的）。caprice 就是一個突然冒出來、背後沒有道理的念頭，這正好說明了 capricious 今天在講什麼。
Wiktionary etymology supplied in this packet (source_ref kaikki:3f6f69a190036ae4:208865186:21489): borrowed from Middle French capricieux, from Italian capriccioso, from capriccio; by surface analysis caprice + -ious.
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