Unusual vs Idiosyncratic - What's the difference?
unusual | idiosyncratic | Related terms |
Unlike what is expected; differing in some way from the norm.
*
, title=(The Celebrity), chapter=2
, passage=I had occasion […] to make a somewhat long business trip to Chicago, and on my return […] I found Farrar awaiting me in the railway station. He smiled his wonted fraction by way of greeting, […], and finally leading me to his buggy, turned and drove out of town. I was completely mystified at such an unusual proceeding.}}
Not usual.
Peculiar to a specific individual; eccentric.
* 1886 , (Robert Louis Stevenson), Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde , ch. 9:
* 1891 , (George MacDonald), The Flight of the Shadow , ch. 12:
* 1982 , Michael Walsh, "
Unusual is a related term of idiosyncratic.
As adjectives the difference between unusual and idiosyncratic
is that unusual is unlike what is expected; differing in some way from the norm while idiosyncratic is peculiar to a specific individual; eccentric.unusual
English
Alternative forms
* unusuall (obsolete)Adjective
(en adjective)Synonyms
* (different from the expected) abnormal, rare, strange, weird, (stronger) extraordinary ** See alsoAntonyms
* (different from the expected) normal, usualidiosyncratic
English
Adjective
(en adjective)- 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.
- It was no merely idiosyncratic experience, for the youth had the same: it was love!
Music: A Fresh Falstaff in Los Angeles," Time , 26 April:
- 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.