odd
Differing from what is usual, ordinary or expected.
Adjective
- Differing from what is usual, ordinary or expected.
- She slept in, which was very odd.
- We made an odd party before the arrival of the Ten, particularly when the Celebrity dropped in for lunch or dinner. He could not be induced to remain permanently at Mohair because Miss Trevor was at Asquith, but he...
- Jena Janovy is a strange bird—a college basketball player who is a) female and b) short (5 feet 3 inches) and, perhaps oddest of all, lets neither of those things dampen her rabid enthusiasm for the game. - 1987 June...
Synonyms: unusual strange aberrant abnormal alien anomalous as queer as Dick's hatband bizarre booky curious deviant discrepant eerie eldritch errant exceptional extraordinary fey forby freak freakish freaky fremd funny
Antonyms: common familiar mediocre average basic bog-standard common as bums common as dirt common as muck common as pig tracks dime a dozen everyday frequent general habitual nonrare par for the course pedestrian plain quotidian regular routinary routine ten a penny
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Peculiar, singular and strange in looks or character; eccentric, bizarre.
- [One of them would] say, 'Hi, Mother.' This might be Chrissie with the purple hair and black lipstick, or Adam, who usually wore odd leather stuff. Sometimes 'Hi' was all I heard; other times they'd stay and talk for a...
Synonyms: unusual strange aberrant abnormal alien anomalous as queer as Dick's hatband bizarre booky curious deviant discrepant eerie eldritch errant exceptional extraordinary fey forby freak freakish freaky fremd funny
Antonyms: common familiar mediocre average basic bog-standard common as bums common as dirt common as muck common as pig tracks dime a dozen everyday frequent general habitual nonrare par for the course pedestrian plain quotidian regular routinary routine ten a penny
- Without a corresponding mate in a pair or set; unmatched; (of a pair or set) mismatched.
- Optimistically, he had a corner of a drawer for odd socks.
- My cat Fluffy has odd eyes: one blue and one brown.
- Itm , lxij almond rivetts. Almain rivetts, a sort of light armour having sleeves of mail, or iron plates, rivetted, with braces for the defence of the arms. Itm, one odd back for an almond rivett. - 1822, John Gage, The...
Synonyms: single mismatched
- Left over, remaining after the rest have been paired or grouped.
- I'm the odd one out.
- Left over or remaining (as a small amount) after counting, payment, etc.
- "Here, I have some odd change that should make things easier." As Tish turned and reached for the cigarettes, Eric took some loose coins from his pocket and placed the change from the twenty into his other pocket. -...
- Third was my college loan of five thousand dollars and some odd change. - 2010, Chris Thomas, The Rockefeller Fraud, Xulon Press, →ISBN, page 24:
- Scattered; occasional, infrequent; not forming part of a set or pattern.
- I don't speak Latin well, so in hearing a dissertation in Latin, I would only be able to make out the odd word of it.
- but for the odd exception
- As she ran on her numerous errands Jessamy found that if she did not stop to think, she knew all kinds of odd little things that the other Jessamy must have learned, such as where the nutmeg grater lived, and which was...
- Not regular or planned.
- He's only worked odd jobs.
- Used or employed for odd jobs.
- The odd horse will now be employed in carting couch grass on to pasture land, carting hay, &c, to sheep in the field, carting roots, straw, &c, for feeding cattle in the boxes or dairy cows in the stalls or yards, and...
- At about 14 he rises a step by getting the 'odd' horse and cart, and does all the small carting work about the farm. - 1894, Great Britain. Parliament. House of Commons, Sessional papers. Inventory control record 1,...
- There is also the “orra man who, like the odd horse, is kept busy on odd jobs. - 1912, John Burleigh, Ednam and Its Indwellers:
- Numerically indivisible by two.
- The product of two odd numbers is also odd.
- In their original article, Messrs Christie and Schultz found that in 70 of the 100 most heavily traded stocks, Nasdaq dealers avoided quoting prices in odd eighths of a dollar. Buyers were far more likely to quote...
Antonyms: even
- Numbered with an odd number.
- How do I print only the odd pages?
- About, approximately; somewhat more than (an approximated round number).
- There were thirty-odd people in the room.
- Out of the way, secluded.
- "Well, isn't it a bit unusual to run into an old friend in an odd corner of the world like this?" I asked. - 1958, Henry Miller, The Colossus of Maroussi, New Directions Publishing, →ISBN, page 218:
- Plant a clump in your postage stamp garden, or stuff them in an odd corner of a flower bed. (They prefer full sun but will tolerate filtered shade.) - 2015, Karen Newcomb, The Postage Stamp Vegetable Garden: Grow Tons...
- On the left.
- He served from the odd court.
Origin
From Middle English odde, od (“odd (not even); leftover after division into pairs”), from Old Norse oddi (“odd, third or additional number; triangle”), from oddr (“point of a weapon”), from Proto-Germanic *uzdaz (“point”), from Proto-Indo-European *wes- (“to stick, prick, pierce, sting”) + *dʰeh₁- (“to set, place”). Cognate to Icelandic oddi (“triangle, point of land, odd number”), Swedish udda (“odd”), udd (“a point”), Danish od (“point of weapon””) and odde (“a headland, point”), Norwegian Bokmål odde (“a point”, “odd”, “peculiar”); related to Old English ord (“a point”). Doublet of ord ("point").
Forms
Related
Derived
at odd times even-odd nonodd odd and curious oddball odd bird odd-bod odd bod odd-come-short odd couple odd duck odden odderon odd-even odd-eyed Oddfellow odd fish odd function oddify oddish odditorium oddity odd-job odd job
Noun
- Something left over, not forming part of a set.
- I’ve got three complete sets of these trading cards for sale, plus a few dozen odds.
- An odd number.
- So let’s see. There are two evens here and three odds.