Adjective

(-)

Never before seen or done, without precedent.

* {{quote-news

, year=2011 , date=December 19 , author=Kerry Brown , title=Kim Jong-il obituary , work=The Guardian citation , page= , passage=With the descent of the cold war, relations between the two countries (for this is, to all intents and purposes, what they became after the end of the war) were almost completely broken off, with whole families split for the ensuing decades, some for ever. This event and its after-effects, along with the war against the Japanese in the 1940s, was to cast a long shadow over the years ahead, and led to the creation of the wholly unprecedented worship of Kim Il-sung, and his elevation to almost God-like status. It was also to create the system in which his son was to occupy almost as impossibly elevated a position.}}

Adjective

(er)

Not normal; odd, unusual, surprising, out of the ordinary.

He thought it strange that his girlfriend wore shorts in the winter.

* Milton

Sated at length, erelong I might perceive / Strange alteration in me.

Unfamiliar, not yet part of one's experience.

I moved to a strange town when I was ten.

* Shakespeare

Here is the hand and seal of the duke; you know the character, I doubt not; and the signet is not strange to you.

* 1955 , edition, ISBN 0553249592, pages 48–49:

She's probably sitting there hoping a couple of strange detectives will drop in.

(physics) Having the quantum mechanical property of strangeness.

* 2004 Frank Close, Particle Physics: A Very Short Introduction , Oxford, page 93:

A strange quark is electrically charged, carrying an amount -1/3, as does the down quark.

(obsolete) Belonging to another country; foreign.

* Shakespeare

one of the strange queen's lords

* Ascham

I do not contemn the knowledge of strange and divers tongues.

(obsolete) Reserved; distant in deportment.

* Shakespeare

She may be strange and shy at first, but will soon learn to love thee.

(Nathaniel Hawthorne)

(obsolete) Backward; slow.

* Beaumont and Fletcher

Who, loving the effect, would not be strange / In favouring the cause.

(obsolete) Not familiar; unaccustomed; inexperienced.

* Shakespeare

In thy fortunes am unlearned and strange .