oddball

noun
/ˈɑːdˌbɔl/US

Etymology

Compound of odd + ball. First used in late 1930s, describing an extra ball played as a bonus in pin-ball type games. Well-attested since the 1940s, with the adjective appearing earlier than the noun.

  1. derived from *bʰel-
  2. derived from *bʰélō
  3. inherited from *balluz
  4. derived from bǫllr
  5. inherited from *beall
  6. inherited from bal
  7. compounded as oddball — “odd + ball

Definitions

  1. An eccentric or unusual person.

    • Miss Quinn thought that Oswald spoke Russian well in view of his lack of formal training; she found the evening uninteresting. Donovan, with whom she had a date later, testified that she told him that Oswald was “kind of an oddball.”
    • "She's different, mister. A real oddball, if you know what I mean. But your little girl would love her. All kids love the Doll Lady."
  2. A deviant stimulus that appears among repetitive stimuli during an experiment, to trigger…

    A deviant stimulus that appears among repetitive stimuli during an experiment, to trigger an event-related potential in the participant.

  3. Exotic, not mainstream.

    • An oddball word processor, for example, might never be supported by such helpful tools as spelling checkers, indexing programs, footnote utilities,...

The neighborhood

Vish — recursive loop

No curated loop yet for oddball. Loops are being traced one word at a time while the ingestion pipeline matures.

sense glosses and etymology drawn from English Wiktionary · source · CC-BY-SA