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''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:

  3. 1982 April 26, Michael Walsh, “Music: A Fresh Falstaff in Los Angeles”, in Time, 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:

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

Link to original

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