''idiosyncratic'' ▫ᴱᴺ｜Definition｜1st｜20260723122144-00-⌔

idiosyncratic - Wiktionary, the free dictionary

English

Adjective

idiosyncratic (comparative more idiosyncratic, superlative most idiosyncratic)

• Peculiar to a specific individual; eccentric.
  • ✤ At the time, I set it down to some idiosyncratic, personal distaste […] but I have since had reason to believe the cause to lie much deeper in the nature of man.¹
  • ✤ It was no merely idiosyncratic experience, for the youth had the same: it was love!²
  • ✤ British Director Ronald Eyre kept the action crisp; he was correctly content to execute the composer’s wishes, rather than impose a fashionably idiosyncratic view of his own.³
  • ✤ I’m not saying that[Charlie] Kaufman’s film will be enshrined as a classic, as those[Stanley] Kubrick films are. It’s too idiosyncratic and demanding for that: many viewers will be thinking of ending it halfway through⁴
  • ✤ The name “Quentin” clearly operates as a lucky charm if you’re an idiosyncratic film-maker, especially if you deal with sudden death, craziness and Z-movie Americana.⁵

Etymology

From idiosyncrasy +‎ -ic. By surface analysis, idio- +‎ syn- +‎ -cratic.

Pronunciation

• (Received Pronunciation) IPA: /ˌɪd.i.əʊ.sɪŋˈkɹæt.ɪk/, /-ˌsɪŋ-/
• (General American, Canada) IPA: /ˌɪd.i.oʊ.sɪŋˈkɹæt.ɪk/, [ˌɪd.i.oʊ.sɪŋˈkɹæɾ.ɪk],/-ˌsɪŋ-/
  • Audio (Texas): 🔊
• (Australian) IPA: /ˌɪd.i.əʉ.sɪŋˈkɹæt.ɪk/, [ˌɪd.i.əʉ.sɪŋˈkɹæɾ.ɪk],/-ˌsɪŋ-/
• (New Zealand) IPA: /ˌəd.i.ɐʉ.səŋˈkɹɛt.ək/, [ˌəd.i.ɐʉ.səŋˈkɹɛɾ.ək],/-ˌsəŋ-/
• Rhymes: -ætɪk

Printed 2026-07-23.

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Footnotes

1. 1886 January 5, Robert Louis Stevenson, Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, London: Longmans, Green, and Co., →OCLC: ↩

2. 1891, George MacDonald, chapter 12, in The Flight of the Shadow ‎${}^{[1]}$: ↩

3. 1982 April 26, Michael Walsh, “Music: A Fresh Falstaff in Los Angeles”, in Time ‎${}^{[2]}$, archived from the original on 21 October 2010: ↩

4. 2020 September 1, Nicholas Barber, “Five stars for I’m Thinking of Ending Things”, in BBC ‎${}^{[3]}$: ↩

5. 2021 July 4, Jonathan Romney, “‘I want to make people laugh’: Quentin Dupieux, the fun auteur of French cinema”, in The Observer ‎${}^{[4]}$, →ISSN, archived from the original on 16 March 2022: ↩