Outlandish

How to spell outlandish

10 letters · 3 syllables

How to pronounce outlandish

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does outlandish mean?

1. adjectiveStrikingly strange, bizarre, or unreasonable; far beyond what is normal or sensible.

Outlandish in a sentence

• The contractor quoted an outlandish price for a simple repair.

• Her colleague turned up to the meeting in an outlandish costume.

Where does outlandish come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

This word reaches all the way back to the Old English noun utland, which literally meant 'out-land', that is, foreign or distant country lying beyond one's own borders. From it came the adjective utlendisc, describing something or someone 'belonging to a foreign land'. For centuries the word simply meant 'foreign', and a person from another country could be called outlandish without any insult intended. Over time, because anything foreign struck people as unfamiliar and odd, the meaning drifted from 'foreign' toward 'strange', 'unfamiliar', and finally 'bizarre or absurd', which is the sense that survives today. The spelling preserves the old building blocks plainly: out plus land plus -ish, so picturing a thing from a strange 'out land' helps fix the silent logic of the word and stops the d from being dropped.

How the word is built

• out- (outside, beyond)
• land (territory, from Old English land)
• -ish (adjective suffix: of the nature of)