exotic

USig-ZAH-tik/ɪɡˈzɑtɪk/Sayig-ZOT-ikUK/ɪɡˈzɒtɪk/AUS/ɪɡˈzɔtɪk/

Noun pluralexotics

8 meanings of exotic

1
adjective
Coming from a faraway place and feeling exciting or unusual.
Like a bird with bright colors you only see in far-off lands.
The market sold exotic fruits I had never seen before.
She loves cooking exotic dishes from other countries.
Similarforeign, faraway, unfamiliar, distant
Oppositefamiliar, local, ordinary
Note
2
adjective
Not naturally found in an area, but brought there from somewhere else.
Like a plant from another country growing where it never used to live.
The lake is full of exotic fish that escaped from home aquariums.
Gardeners sometimes plant exotic species that crowd out local plants.
Similarnon-native, alien, introduced, foreign
Oppositenative, indigenous
3
nouncountable
A dancer who removes clothing as part of a stage performance.
The club hired a new exotic for the weekend shows.
She worked as an exotic to pay for college.
Similarstripper
4
nouncountable
A living thing that does not naturally belong in an area, but came from somewhere else.
Like a fish from another country let loose in a local river.
The pond is now home to several exotics that escaped from gardens.
Removing the exotic took years of careful work.
Similaralien
Oppositenative
Note
5
adjective
Coming from another planet, not from Earth.
Like a strange animal that lives on a planet far away from ours.
The movie featured exotic creatures from a distant planet.
Scientists wondered if exotic life could exist on other worlds.
Similaralien, extraterrestrial
Oppositeterrestrial
6
adjective
Describing an investment deal with extra features that make it harder to understand than the common kinds.
Like a board game with so many added rules that few people can play it well.
The bank offered exotic deals that few customers fully understood.
He lost money on an exotic contract with confusing rules.
Oppositevanilla
Note
7
adjective
Describing a bet where you must pick how several racers will finish.
Like guessing not just who wins a race, but the exact order of the first few.
She placed an exotic bet on the top three horses.
Exotic wagers can pay a lot, but they are hard to win.
Note
8
nouncountable
A tiny particle of an unusual kind that is not one of the common, everyday ones.
Like a strange new animal that doesn't fit any of the groups we already know.
Physicists hope the machine will create a new exotic to study.
Some exotics last only a tiny fraction of a second.
Note

Practice

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Origin

It comes from a Greek word meaning "foreign" or "from the outside," which passed through Latin and French.