outlandish
/ˌaʊtˈlændɪʃ/
Word Rarity
Rare
Frequency: Zipf frequency 3.07 in modern English
14
Scrabble Score
10
Letters
3
Syllables
10
Unique Chars
Meaning
adj
Appearing to be foreign; strange, unfamiliar.
adj
Greatly different from common experience; bizarre, outrageous, strange.
adj
Of a place: far away from where most people are located; in the middle of nowhere, out of the way, remote.
Derogatory
Example Sentences
- "[W]e haue bꝛokẽ thy ſtatutes ⁊ cõmaundementes agayne, ⁊ mengled o^ꝛ ſelues wᵗ the vnclẽnes of the outlandiſh heithen."
- "Apiſhneſſe rides in a Chariot made of nothing but cages, in which are all the ſtrangeſt out-landiſh Birds that can be gotten: […]"
- "Did not Solomon king of Iſrael ſinne by these things? yet among many nations was there no king like him, who was beloued of his God, and God made him king ouer all Iſrael: neuertheleſſe, euen him did outlandiſh women cauſe to ſinne."
- "The people therefore of the fair made a great gazing upon them: Some ſaid they vvere Fools, ſome they vvere Bedlams, and ſome they are Outlandiſh-men."
- "[H]e did not like the name of the outlandish man with the golden clock in his stockings."
- "[I]f breeding amongſt Chriſtians vvas as much encouraged as amongſt Dogs and Horſes, vve need not be making Lavvs to let in a Parcel of outlandiſh Locuſts to eat us all up."
Etymology
The adjective is derived from Middle English outlandisch, outlondish (“foreign”), from Old English ūtlendisċ (“foreign; strange, outlandish”), from Proto-West Germanic *ūtlandisk, from Proto-Germanic *ūtlandiskaz, from *ūtlandą (“(adjective) alien, foreign; relating to outlying land; (noun) foreign land; outlying land”) + *-iskaz (suffix forming adjectives from nouns with the sense ‘characteristic of; pertaining to’). *Ūtlandą is derived from *ūt- (suffix meaning ‘beyond; external to, on the outside of’) (from Proto-Indo-European *úd (“away; out, outward; upwards”)) + *landą (“area of ground, land”) (from Proto-Indo-European *lendʰ- (“heath; land”)). By surface analysis, outland + -ish. The noun is derived from the adjective. Cognates * Danish udenlandsk (“foreign, non-domestic”) * Dutch uitlands (dated) (now buitenlands (“foreign, non-domestic”)), Dutch uitlandig (“absent from the home country”) (now chiefly Suriname) * Faroese útlendskur (“foreign, non-domestic”) * German ausländisch (“foreign, non-domestic”) * Icelandic útlenskur (“foreign”) * Swedish utländsk (“foreign, non-domestic”)
Origin
Word Breakdown
- Root: *lendʰ-, outlandisch, ūtlendisċ, *ūtlandisk, *ūtlandiskaz, *úd
Regional Pronunciation
- American English: /ˌaʊtˈlændɪʃ/
- British English: /ˌaʊtˈlændɪʃ/
Usage
Inflected Forms
more outlandish (comparative)
most outlandish (superlative)