Oddity  

From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia

Portrait of Antonietta Gonzales

The Museum Wormianum

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1. An odd or strange thing.
2. A strange person; an oddball.
3. strangeness
4. Medical oddity, an unusual predicament or event which takes place in a medical context.

Namesakes

• "Space Oddity", a song written and performed by David Bowie and released as a single in 1969.

Etymology

From Middle English odde, od (“odd (not even); leftover after division into pairs”), from Old Norse oddi (“odd, third or additional number; triangle”), from oddr (“point of a weapon”), from Proto-Germanic *uzdaz (“point”), from Proto-Indo-European *wes- (“to stick, prick, pierce, sting”) + *dʰeh₁- (“to set, place”).

Cognate to Icelandic oddi (“triangle, point of land, odd number”), Swedish udda (“odd”), udd (“a point”), Danish od (“point of weapon””) and odde (“a headland, point”), Norwegian Bokmål odde (“a point”, “odd”, “peculiar”); related to Old English ord (“a point”). Doublet of ord ("point").

See also

• Medical oddity, an unusual predicament or event which takes place in a medical context.
• Weirdo