stranger
Pluralstrangers
Pluralstrangers
Formsstrangers, strangering, strangered
- 1A person you do not know, who is neither a friend nor an acquaintance.
A stranger knocked on the door asking to use the phone.
She felt safe enough to share her story with a stranger on the train.
Oppositefriend, acquaintance
Note
At heart this is "someone from outside": Middle English straunger, from Old French estrangier, ultimately from Latin extraneus, built on extra, "outside of". The same root gives English estrange, French étranger and Spanish extranjero. In everyday use the word pairs with to (a stranger to me) and with warnings to children about talking to strangers. A stranger is not a known enemy, only someone unknown.
- 2An outsider or foreigner; a person who comes from elsewhere and does not belong to the local community.
As a stranger in the region, she struggled to follow the local customs.
The border guards questioned every stranger entering the kingdom.
Similaroutsider, foreigner, alien, newcomer, incomer
Oppositelocal, native, insider
Note
Here the word keeps the Latin "foreign" behind the everyday noun. Shakespeare and Fletcher's Katherine calls herself "a stranger, / Born out of your dominions" (1613). With to it stretches easily: George Granville's melons are "strangers to the sun" (1726), meaning plants far from their native climate. George Santayana could still write in 1952, "I like to be a stranger."
- 3A newcomer; a person who has recently arrived somewhere and is new to the place.
Being a stranger to the company, she spent her first week learning everyone's name.
The club welcomes strangers and helps them settle in quickly.
Similarnewcomer, incomer, outsider
Oppositeveteran, old-timer, regular
Note
The newcomer's eye is the one that notices. A 1950 Railway Magazine writer begins with "the first thing that strikes the stranger." The sense lives on in a common idiom: to be no stranger to something means to know it well. A BBC Sport report of 2023 says Alexander-Arnold "is no stranger to an unusual shirt number." The negative turns newness into long familiarity.
She is no stranger to hard work.
As a stranger in town, he noticed what locals ignored.
- 4Comparative form of strange.
His behavior seemed stranger the longer they talked.
Few things are stranger than a silent city at noon.
Note
Built with -er, like stronger or larger, and usually followed by than: truth is stranger than fiction. It can sharpen any sense of strange, such as odder or less familiar, though "more odd" is the usual one. The same spelling is also a noun, a person one does not know, which reached English separately through Old French estrangier, itself formed from estrange.
- 5A person the speaker actually knows well, addressed jokingly as if unknown, especially after a long absence.
Hey, stranger! It's been far too long since we last met!
He grinned at his cousin and said, "Look who finally showed up, stranger."
- 6A person who is not a party to an act, contract, or title; an intruder or intermeddler who interferes without any legal right.
A stranger to the deed cannot sue to enforce a covenant contained in it.
The judge dismissed the claim because the plaintiff was a stranger to the original contract.
Similaroutsider, nonparty, interloper
Oppositeparty
Note
Lawyers use the word for anyone outside a legal relationship: a stranger to the contract, the deed or the title. Such a person has no rights under it and no standing to interfere. Possession can be good title "against a stranger having no title." The phrase legal stranger can have harsh effects: a 1980 Gay Community News report describes an adoption that made a natural mother one, ending her visitation rights.
- 7A person who has not been admitted to communion or fellowship within a religious community.
A stranger to the faith was not permitted to receive the sacrament.
The elders treated him as a stranger until he was formally admitted to fellowship.
Oppositemember, communicant
Less common meanings
- 8A person who does not belong to the family or household; a guest or visitor.
To honour and receive / Our heavenly stranger.
1667, John Milton, Paradise LostNote
A word of hospitality rather than suspicion: here the stranger is someone received into a home, not someone unknown to it. Milton's Paradise Lost (1667) can speak of receiving "our heavenly stranger" as an honored visitor. The sense is obsolete, so read it as "guest" in older texts. In modern writing, readers will hear only the "unknown person" meaning.
- 9A superstitious sign believed to foretell a visitor's arrival, such as a stalk floating in a cup of tea or a guttering candle flame.
A stalk bobbing in his cup was a stranger, foretelling the guest he felt sure would come.
The old woman read a stranger in the guttering candle and tidied the parlor for her visitor.
Note
Folk belief gave the omen the name of what it foretold. A tea-stalk floating in the cup or a guttering candle was itself "a stranger," a sign that a visitor was coming. The sign borrows its name from the obsolete "guest" sense. Like that meaning, it survives only in older writing, so modern prose should explain it rather than use it bare.
- 10To estrange someone; to make a person feel distant or alienated from another.
Long silence will stranger even the closest of companions.
Dowered with our curse, and strangered with our oath
c. 1603, William Shakespeare, “The Tragedie of King Lear”Note
A verb that English kept only briefly, surviving now mainly through King Lear: "Dowered with our curse, and strangered with our oath." It took the regular forms strangered and strangering and needed a direct object. Today estrange does this work. Estrange comes from the same Latin root as the everyday noun, so modern use should choose it unless the writer means to echo Shakespeare.
Showing meanings only.
stranger is a form of strange
strange, adjective: Not normal; odd or unusual in a way that surprises and often unsettles. Full entry
- Spelling
- strange → stranger: add -r
Practice
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Origin
From Middle English straunger, from Old French estrangier ("foreign, alien"), which came from Latin extraneus ("foreign, external"), itself from extra ("outside of"). It is related to French étranger and Spanish extranjero ("foreigner"), and it displaced the native Old English fremde.