strange
adjective · noun
Simple meaning
not normal, odd, or unusual in a surprising way
Pronunciation
Say it like this:
straynjIPA pronunciation (US)
ˈstɹeɪndʒ
This word is pronounced essentially the same in American and British English, so one transcription covers both.
IPA (International Phonetic Alphabet) is a standard way of writing speech sounds.
Definition
Everyday modern meanings first, grouped by part of speech.
adjective
Not normal; odd, unusual, surprising, out of the ordinary, often with a negative connotation.
Unfamiliar, not yet part of one's experience.
slangof sexgenitalsetc
Outside of one's current relationship; unfamiliar.
noun
A community in King township, Ontario, Canada, named after Frederick William Strange.
Word at a Glance
- Difficulty
- B1 · Intermediate
- Frequency
- Common
- Typical Use
- Everyday English
Word Aura™
How this word commonly comes across.
Aura for this meaning
This meaning: Not normal; odd, unusual, surprising, out of the ordinary, often with a negative connotation.
Used this way, strange is a reasonably familiar word that usually carries little praise or criticism of its own. It usually sounds natural in a wide range of settings.
- Emotional tone
- Neutral
- Formality
- Neutral
- Intensity
- Not strongly marked
- How common
- Moderately common
- Connotation
- No strong connotation
- Usage feel
- Neutral and straightforward
Nearby words
- quaint , used mainly in Regional English
- freaky , more casual, better suited to speech than writing
Word Aura describes common impressions, not a measurement. Tone changes with sentence, speaker, relationship and situation.
More ways to use strange
- “A strange exaltation that was indefinable.”adjective
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Common Patterns and Combinations
How this word naturally appears with others.
Similar Words, What’s the Difference?
Close in meaning, but not always interchangeable.
Word Family
Related forms, grouped by how they connect.
Inflected forms
Grammatical variations of the same word.
Anyone who does not belong in the environment in which they are found.
Word family
Words built from the same root.
Unusualness as a consequence of not being well known.
In a strange manner.
Compound terms
Established multiword terms.
A quark with an electric charge of -1/3 and a mass 988 times that of an electron and a strangeness of -1.
An elementary particle with non-zero strangeness.
An attractor for which the approach to its final point in phase space is chaotic.
More about this wordSynonyms, forms, origin
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Dictionary data from Wiktionary via the Free Dictionary API. Simple meanings, combinations and word intelligence are built from verified reference data, no AI is used to load this page.