odd

Formsodder, oddest

Pluralodds

1. 1
   adjective

   Peculiar or eccentric in appearance or character; bizarre.

   Adam usually wore odd leather clothes and said little.

   The professor was a brilliant but odd man who lectured to his cat.

   Similarstrange, bizarre, unusual, eccentric, curious

   Oppositecommon, familiar, ordinary, conventional

2. 2
   adjective

   In mathematics, not divisible by two.

   Every odd house number on our street is on the left side.

   If we have an odd number of players, someone will have to sit out.

   Oppositeeven

   Note

   Mathematics fixes its opposite as even, and parity holds through products: two odd numbers multiplied give an odd one. It can count fractional units too. When The Economist (1998) reports Nasdaq dealers avoiding "odd eighths of a dollar," it means three-eighths, five-eighths and so on. The extra-one-beyond-the-pairs history behind the "left over" meaning is the same history behind this term.

3. 3
   adjective

   Having no matching partner in a pair or set, or containing items that do not match each other.

   I found an odd glove under the car seat, but never the other one.

   The inventory lists one odd back for a suit of light armor.

   Similarmismatched, single

   Oppositematching

   Note

   Two levels of matching meet in this sense. A single item can be odd, like a sock without its partner. A whole pair can be odd too, as with a cat whose eyes are one blue and one brown. Inventories use it plainly: John Gage's The History and Antiquities of Hengrave (1822) lists "one odd back" for a piece of armor. Single suits the lone item, and mismatched suits the pair.

4. 4
   adjective

   Kept or used for a variety of small tasks as needed.

   The odd horse carts hay to the sheep and roots to the cattle in the yards.

   He spent the summer doing odd jobs around the neighborhood for cash.

   Note

   A farm word for a role: the odd horse was the spare animal that did whatever carting the day required, from hay for the sheep to roots for the cattle. It runs through farm writing from the Journal of Horticulture and Practical Gardening (1879) to John Burleigh's Ednam and Its Indwellers (1912). Burleigh sets it beside the orra man, kept busy on odd jobs. Nothing about the horse itself need be unusual.

5. 5
   adjectivein compounds

   Combined with a round number, about or somewhat more than the number stated.

   Some forty-odd years later the letters turned up in an attic.

   The company employs two hundred-odd people across three sites.

   Note

   Attached by hyphen to a round number, it adds "and a few more": thirty-odd, forty-odd years, two hundred-odd people. It suits round figures, not exact ones. The hyphen does real work. Written open, "thirty odd people" can be read with the "eccentric" meaning, as thirty strange people rather than about thirty.

6. 6
   adjective

   Occurring here and there or now and then, rather than as part of a set or pattern.

   Odd bits of litter lay along the trail, but nothing like the heaps near the parking lot.

   Over the years he picked up the odd phrase of Portuguese from the dockworkers, never enough to hold a conversation.

   Similaroccasional, scattered, stray, random

   Note

   An article usually settles the meaning here: the odd word, the odd exception. With the, odd means now and then. "I caught the odd word" reports a few words scattered through a speech, while "I caught an odd word" reports a strange one. Little and bits are frequent companions, as in Barbara Sleigh's Jessamy (1967), with its "all kinds of odd little things."

7. 7
   adjective

   Not part of any pair or group once the rest have been sorted, and so left over.

   I'm the odd one out in a family of engineers.

   Sort the gloves into pairs and put any odd ones in the box.

   Similarspare, extra, leftover, unpaired

   Oppositepaired

   Note

   The oldest idea in the word: Middle English odde meant what remains after division into pairs. It came from Old Norse oddi, a third or additional number, and before that from oddr, the point of a weapon. The odd one is the extra that sticks out. Today the sense lives mainly in the odd one out. For a glove that has lost its mate, the "unmatched" meaning fits better.

8. 8
   adjective

   Forming a small leftover amount after a sum has been counted, paid, or settled.

   After paying for groceries, he dropped the odd coins into the charity box.

   The loan was five thousand dollars and some odd change.

   Similarspare, loose

   Note

   Small change after a sum is its natural home: "five thousand dollars and some odd change." Some is its usual partner. It shades into the approximating thirty-odd, since both name a little extra beyond a round figure. Here, though, the extra is the actual remainder in hand, not a vague addition to a number.

9. 9
   adjective

   Not regular or planned; casual.

   Between contracts he took odd jobs to keep the rent paid.

   The shop opens at odd times, whenever the owner feels like it.

   Similarcasual, irregular, occasional, random

   Oppositeregular, fixed

10. 10
    adjective

    Strange or surprising because it departs from what is normal or expected.

    It was odd to see the shop shut on a Saturday, its busiest day.

    Everyone found it odd that the mayor walked out halfway through his own speech.

    Similarunusual, strange, abnormal, bizarre, curious

    Oppositecommon, familiar, usual, ordinary

    Note

    Mild surprise is the register here: something odd departs from expectation without suggesting alarm, and the word is plainer and more matter-of-fact than strange. Unlike many senses of the word, it grades freely. Will Schwalbe writes of something odd and then "odder that Mom refused to correct them," and Karen Stabiner in The New York Times (1987) reaches for "perhaps oddest of all."

Showing meanings only. Show all 16