pariah
Pluralpariahs
- 1A person, group, or country that is despised, rejected, and shunned by others; an outcast.
The senator became a pariah in his own party once the scandal broke.
After she reported the fraud, she was treated as a pariah by her coworkers.
UsageOften a pariah in or among a group; also before a noun: a pariah state.
Similaroutcast, leper, untouchable
Note
The word began as a caste name in Tamil and Malayalam meaning "drummers", after the large drum used to announce the king's notices to the public. English stretched it to any outcast, and the society that shuts the person out is often named with from or in: Thackeray's narrator Fitz-Boodle, capitalizing it, jokes that smoking could make a man a Pariah from genteel society.
Checked 31 Oct 2026 · 6 facts
- The word originated as a caste name associated with drumming. en.wikisource.org
- The source forms occur in Tamil and Malayalam and derive from words meaning drummer and drum. en.wiktionary.org
- The large drum was used to announce royal notices publicly. en.wiktionary.org
- English extended the caste name to mean a social outcast. gutenberg.org
- The passage is narrated by Thackeray's fictional George Savage Fitz-Boodle in The Fitz-Boodle Papers. gutenberg.org
- The cited passage has a capital P in Pariah. en.wiktionary.org
Less common meaning
- 2Ellipsis of pariah dog: a native Indian dog breed, or any half-wild stray dog in India.
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Origin
Two sources are proposed. One is Tamil paṟaiyar, built on paṟaiyaṉ ("drummer") and in turn on paṟai ("drum"). The other is Malayalam paṟayaṟ, built on paṟayaṉ ("drummer") and in turn on paṟa ("drum"). Drums of this large kind were used to make the king's announcements known to the public. The drummers, called paraiyar, ranked low in caste-based society, which led to the scornful forms paraiah and pariah.