outré

Mar. 23rd, 2018 07:54 am
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[personal profile] prettygoodword
outré or outre (oo-TRAY) - adj., unconventional, bizarre, outrageous, passing the bounds of what is usual or considered proper.


(Note to self: starts with an OO- not OW- sound.) The original sense was more on the shockingly unconventional side of things -- outrage came from the same source -- but it's now used at least as much in a just gee-that's-weird way. Adopted in 1722 from French (as you can tell by that outré-in-the-sense-of-unusual-for-English decoration on the -e) outré, exaggerated/excessive/extreme, past participle of outrer, to carry to excess, from Old French ultrer, from ultre, beyond, from Latin ultra.

---L.

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