idiosyncratic
adjUK /ˌɪd.i.əʊ.sɪŋˈkɹæt.ɪk/ · CA, US /ˌɪd.i.oʊ.sɪŋˈkɹæt.ɪk/
Etymology From idiosyncrasy + -ic. By surface analysis, idio- + syn- + -cratic.
1
Peculiar to a specific individual; eccentric.
- At the time, I set it down to some idiosyncratic, personal distaste […] but I have since had reason to believe the cause to lie much deeper in the nature of man.1886 January 5, Robert Louis Stevenson, Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, London: Longmans, Green, and Co., →OCLC:
- It was no merely idiosyncratic experience, for the youth had the same: it was love!1891, George MacDonald, chapter 12, in The Flight of the Shadow:
3 more examples
- British Director Ronald Eyre kept the action crisp; he was correctly content to execute the composer's wishes, rather than impose a fashionably idiosyncratic view of his own.1982 April 26, Michael Walsh, “Music: A Fresh Falstaff in Los Angeles”, in Time, archived from the original on 21 Oct 2010:
- I’m not saying that [Charlie] Kaufman’s film will be enshrined as a classic, as those [Stanley] Kubrick films are. It’s too idiosyncratic and demanding for that: many viewers will be thinking of ending it halfway through2020 September 1, Nicholas Barber, “Five stars for I'm Thinking of Ending Things”, in BBC:
- The name “Quentin” clearly operates as a lucky charm if you’re an idiosyncratic film-maker, especially if you deal with sudden death, craziness and Z-movie Americana.2021 July 4, Jonathan Romney, “‘I want to make people laugh’: Quentin Dupieux, the fun auteur of French cinema”, in The Observer, →ISSN, archived from the original on 16 Mar 2022:
- Derived terms
- idiosyncratical, idiosyncratically, idiosyncraticity, idiosyncratic reaction, nonidiosyncratic, unidiosyncratic
- Related terms
- idiosyncrasy