Outrageous vs Ludicrous - What's the difference?
outrageous | ludicrous | Related terms |
Cruel, violating morality or decency; provoking indignation or affront.
* c. 1601 , (William Shakespeare), (Hamlet) , First Folio 1623:
* 2011 , Paul Wilson, (The Guardian) , 19 Oct 2011:
* 1590 , (Edmund Spenser), (The Faerie Queene) , III.4:
Transgressing reasonable limits; extravagant, immoderate.
* 2004 , David Smith, , 19 Dec 2004:
Shocking; exceeding conventional behaviour; provocative.
*{{quote-book, year=1935, author=
, title=Death on the Centre Court, chapter=1
, passage=She mixed furniture with the same fatal profligacy as she mixed drinks, and this outrageous contact between things which were intended by Nature to be kept poles apart gave her an inexpressible thrill.}}
* 2001 , Imogen Tilden, (The Guardian) , 8 Dec 2001:
*:"It's something I really am quite nervous about," he admits, before adding, with relish: "You have to be a bit outrageous and challenging sometimes."
Idiotic or unthinkable, often to the point of being funny.
*
, title=(The Celebrity), chapter=3
, passage=Now all this was very fine, but not at all in keeping with the Celebrity's character as I had come to conceive it. The idea that adulation ever cloyed on him was ludicrous in itself. In fact I thought the whole story fishy, and came very near to saying so.}}
Amusing by being plainly incongruous or absurd.
* 2014 , , "
* , title=The Mirror and the Lamp
, chapter=2
Outrageous is a related term of ludicrous.
As adjectives the difference between outrageous and ludicrous
is that outrageous is cruel, violating morality or decency; provoking indignation or affront while ludicrous is idiotic or unthinkable, often to the point of being funny.outrageous
English
Adjective
(en adjective)- To be, or not to be, that is the Question: / Whether 'tis Nobler in the minde to suffer / The Slings and Arrowes of outragious Fortune, / Or to take Armes against a Sea of troubles, / And by opposing end them [...].
- The Irish-French rugby union whistler Alain Rolland was roundly condemned for his outrageous decision that lifting a player into the air then turning him over so he falls on his head or neck amounted to dangerous play.
- For els my feeble vessell, crazd and crackt / Through thy strong buffets and outrageous blowes, / Cannot endure, but needes it must be wrackt [...].
- Audience members praised McKellen, best known for Shakespearean roles and as Gandalf in The Lord of the Rings, for his show-stealing turn as Twankey in a series of outrageous glitzy dresses.
George Goodchild
External links
* *ludicrous
English
Adjective
(en adjective)Southampton hammer eight past hapless Sunderland in barmy encounter", The Guardian , 18 October 2014:
- Five minutes later, Southampton tried to mount their first attack, but Wickham sabotaged the move by tripping the rampaging Nathaniel Clyne, prompting the referee, Andre Marriner, to issue a yellow card. That was a lone blemish on an otherwise tidy start by Poyet’s team – until, that is, the 12th minute, when Vergini produced a candidate for the most ludicrous own goal in Premier League history.
citation, passage=She was a fat, round little woman, richly apparelled in velvet and lace, […]; and the way she laughed, cackling like a hen, the way she talked to the waiters and the maid, […]—all these unexpected phenomena impelled one to hysterical mirth, and made one class her with such immortally ludicrous types as Ally Sloper, the Widow Twankey, or Miss Moucher.}}
