Weirdo

Part of speech: noun

Pronunciation: /ˈwɪədəʊ/

Definitions

1. A person whose behavior, appearance, or interests are strikingly unconventional or eccentric compared to social norms
2. An individual whose unique behavior or interests markedly deviate from societal expectations and norms is often labeled as unusual
3. Someone recognized for exhibiting peculiar traits or actions that distinguish them from the mainstream or typical societal behaviors

Etymology: "Weirdo" is built in a plain way: it takes "weird" and adds the suffix "-o," which American English used in the mid-twentieth century to name a person characterized by something. The pattern appears in words like "hippie" and "druggie," and "weirdo" was first recorded in American English in the early 1950s. The more surprising detail is that a close relative existed decades earlier. "Weirdie," meaning an odd or unconventional person, is attested in Scottish English in 1887, so the idea of a person defined by strangeness was already in circulation before the American coinage took hold. The American form simply gave the notion a snappier, more colloquial shape. The root "weird" itself has a deeper past. It comes from Old English "wyrd," meaning fate or destiny, and once referred to the force that shapes events. Over centuries, the word drifted from "fate" toward "uncanny," and only later came to describe ordinary oddness, which is why "weirdo" carries a faint trace of the unsettling that the older sense once implied.

Synonyms: oddball, eccentric, freak, misfit, oddball

Antonyms: conformist, normal, regular, mainstream, average