Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • noun A person regarded as eccentric.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • noun informal A person with an unusual or odd personality; an eccentric person.
  • noun Anything unusual in its class.
  • adjective informal Eccentric; very unusual; strange; bizarre.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • noun An eccentric or unusual person.
  • adjective Exotic, not mainstream, such as an oddball word or an oddball computer program.

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • noun a person with an unusual or odd personality

Etymologies

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

[odd + (screw)ball.]

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

From odd + ball?

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Examples

  • Adding, what I call oddball ornaments to my Christmas tree, really has nothing to do with the fact that I have a child.

    Epinions Recent Content for Home 2009

  • But some of the biggest, savviest survivors hole up right under our noses, in oddball places we tend to overlook.

    Cover Close to Home: Five Oddball Hiding Spots for Late Season Bucks 2009

  • She's still the same old Tina who is obsessed with finding the humor in oddball, everyday things, Carlock says.

    Tina Fey is between a 'Rock' and a funny place at 'SNL' 2008

  • But what do you call the oddball in a family of "black sheep?"

    Blog Family 2006

  • I've been working hard for a while trying to figure his place out - he's really the "oddball" - he doesn't really FIT with any group & he's always been an anomaly in the show's space/time...

    LOSTCasts 75: LaFleur 2009

  • If attention is responsible for this effect, a more emotionally stirring "oddball" - like a guy pointing a gun at you, which tests have shown is much more salient than a flower-should seem to stay on the screen even longer.

    Gizmodo Popular Science 2010

  • If attention is responsible for this effect, a more emotionally stirring "oddball" - like a guy pointing a gun at you, which tests have shown is much more salient than a flower-should seem to stay on the screen even longer.

    Gizmodo Popular Science 2010

  • Lembit is frequently described as an 'oddball' - which is code for 'deeply weird'.

    Home | Mail Online 2009

  • Where their debut looked to the KLF, Surfing the Void's psychonautical vocabulary recalls another oddball early 90s dance act, the Shamen, who infiltrated the top 10 with talk of a "shamanic, anarchistic, archaic revival" in the days when trance acts played clubs with names like Megatripolis and expounded on the mystical importance of the number

    The Guardian World News 2010

  • There are still plenty of people who use the Craft, as Masons like to call their oddball institution, as the perfect inkblot onto which they can project their fantasies of organized wickedness, whatever those happen to be.

    Energy Bulletin - 2010

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