# eccentric

Pronunciation: US say "ek-SEN-trik" /ɛkˈsɛntɹɪk/; UK/AUS say "ik-SEN-trik" /ɪkˈsɛntɹɪk/

## Adjective

1. Of a person, unconventional and slightly strange, behaving in unexpected ways that depart from the norm.
   - Simple: Of a person, acting in ways that are unusual and a little strange.
   - _The eccentric professor lectured in his slippers and kept a parrot in his office._
   - _Locals regarded the old collector as harmlessly eccentric._
3. Located away from the center rather than at or in it.
   - Simple: Not in the middle, but away from the center.
   - _In trees that lean, the pith is often eccentric, lying well off the middle of the trunk._
   - _An eccentric load on a column, applied away from its axis, makes it bend as well as compress._
5. Of a motion, going against the direction in which a muscle is contracting, as when an outside force bends the elbow while the triceps contracts to control it.
   - Simple: Of a movement, going the opposite way from the way a working muscle pulls.
   - _During the eccentric phase of a squat, the thigh muscles stay active as the hips sink toward the floor._
   - _Opening the mouth slowly while the masseter stays tense is an eccentric motion for that muscle._
7. Shaped as an ellipse rather than a perfect circle.
   - Simple: Shaped like a stretched circle, not perfectly round.
   - _Mercury's orbit is noticeably eccentric compared with Earth's nearly circular one._
   - _An eccentric orbit carries the satellite low over one hemisphere and far out into space over the other._
8. Having a center different from that of another; not concentric.
   - Simple: Not having the same middle point as another circle or shape.
   - _Because the inner and outer walls of the tube were eccentric, its thickness varied around the circumference._
   - _An eccentric reducer joins two pipes of different sizes along one shared edge instead of on a common axis._
10. Having goals or motives that differ from someone else's.
   - Simple: Wanting different things or having different reasons from someone else.
11. Of an oospore, having a single large oil globule on one side that displaces much of the ooplasm and crowds the ooplasts to one side.
   - Simple: Of a spore, having one big drop of oil on one side that pushes its other contents over.
   - _The isolate formed eccentric oospores, each with its oil globule crowded against one side of the wall._
   - _Whether oospores are centric or eccentric is one of the features used to tell these water molds apart._

## Noun

2. A person who does not behave like others, especially one with odd or bizarre habits or beliefs.
   - Simple: A person who acts differently from others, often with strange habits or ideas.
   - _The village has always had its share of eccentrics, from the hermit by the lake to the man who talks to his bees._
   - _Colleagues dismissed her as an eccentric until her theory was proved right._
4. An exercise that works against a muscle's contraction, moving in the opposite direction to it.
   - Simple: An exercise in which the movement goes against the way a muscle tightens.
   - _Physical therapists often prescribe eccentrics for tendon problems in the heel._
   - _Do a slow eccentric on the last rep, lowering the bar for a count of five._
6. A disk or wheel mounted on an axis away from its center, so that turning it produces a back-and-forth motion.
   - Simple: A wheel that turns around a point that is not its center, making something move back and forth.
   - _On a steam locomotive, an eccentric on the driving axle works the valve gear._
   - _Machinists replaced the worn eccentric that drove the press's reciprocating ram._
9. A circle whose center is different from that of another circle.
   - Simple: A circle whose middle point is not the same as another circle's.
   - _Greek astronomers placed the sun on an eccentric to account for seasons of unequal length._
   - _Medieval critics of Ptolemy objected to eccentrics and epicycles as physically impossible._

## Origin

From Middle French excentrique, from Medieval Latin eccentricus, from Ancient Greek ékkentros (“not having the earth as the center of an orbit”), from ek (“out”) + kéntron (“point”). It is equivalent to ex- + -centric.

Source: DictionaryAI, https://dictionaryai.com/define/eccentric (written from Wiktionary data, CC BY-SA 4.0: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/).