Peculiar

How to spell peculiar

8 letters · 3 syllables

How to pronounce peculiar

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does peculiar mean?

1. adjectiveStrange, unusual, or hard to explain.
2. adjectiveBelonging exclusively to a particular person, group, or thing; distinctive.

Peculiar in a sentence

• A peculiar smell was coming from the back of the fridge.

• The bright plumage is peculiar to males of this species.

• The engine made a peculiar noise whenever the car slowed down.

• That crisp accent is peculiar to the northern villages of the region.

Where does peculiar come from?

Language of origin: Latin

The word comes from the Latin peculiaris, meaning 'belonging to one person privately', which was built on peculium, the word for private property or personal savings. That noun in turn grew out of pecu, the Latin word for 'cattle', because in early Roman life livestock was the most basic measure of a person's private wealth. English borrowed peculiar in the 1400s with the original sense of something belonging exclusively to one individual or group, and only later did the meaning drift toward 'distinctive' and then 'strange or odd', since whatever is unique to one thing can easily seem out of the ordinary. The same pecu root still lurks inside 'pecuniary', meaning relating to money, which is a useful reminder that the spelling carries that quiet -li- in the middle. The trap for writers is the ending: it is -iar, not -ier or -liar split awkwardly.

How the word is built

• peculi- (from Latin peculium: private property)
• -ar (adjective suffix)