Bizarre

How to spell bizarre

7 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce bizarre

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does bizarre mean?

1. adjectiveVery strange or unusual in a way that is striking or hard to explain.

Bizarre in a sentence

• The witness gave a bizarre account of the accident that nobody could verify.

• Investigators were baffled by the bizarre pattern of missing files.

Where does bizarre come from?

Language of origin: French

The word came into English in the early 1600s from French bizarre, meaning 'odd, fantastic, or strange'. French had taken it from Italian bizzarro, which originally meant 'angry, hot-tempered, or capricious' before softening into the sense of 'eccentric' or 'unusual'. One long-standing suggestion traces it further back to the Basque word bizar, meaning 'beard', the idea being that bearded Spanish soldiers struck the Italians as fierce and strange-looking, though this Basque link is disputed and may be folk reasoning. What is certain is the spelling trap: English kept the French shape exactly, with a single z but a doubled r and a silent final e, which is why writers so often misjudge how many of each letter it needs. It is unrelated to the similar-sounding 'bazaar', a market word of Persian origin, even though the two are constantly confused on the page.

How the word is built

• bizarre (a single unanalysable borrowing from French; no native prefix, root, or suffix, with the doubled -rr and final silent -e both inherited from the French spelling)