# pariah

Pronunciation: say "puh-RY-uh" /pəˈɹaɪə/

## Noun

1. A person, group, or country that is despised, rejected, and shunned by others; an outcast.
   - Simple: Someone or something, such as a person or country, that others dislike and refuse to accept or deal with.
   - _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._

## Other meanings

- (noun) Ellipsis of pariah dog: a native Indian dog breed, or any half-wild stray dog in India.

## 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.

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