oddball
noun
- eccentric person
Wiktionary
Pronunciation: /ˈɑːdˌbɔl/
adj
Etymology: Compound of odd + ball. First used in late 1930s, describing an extra ball played as a bonus in pin-ball type games. Well-attested since the 1940s, with the adjective appearing earlier than the noun.
- Exotic, not mainstream.
“An oddball word processor, for example, might never be supported by such helpful tools as spelling checkers, indexing programs, footnote utilities,...”
noun
Etymology: Compound of odd + ball. First used in late 1930s, describing an extra ball played as a bonus in pin-ball type games. Well-attested since the 1940s, with the adjective appearing earlier than the noun.
- An eccentric or unusual person.
“Miss Quinn thought that Oswald spoke Russian well in view of his lack of formal training; she found the evening uninteresting. Donovan, with whom she had a date later, testified that she told him that Oswald was “kind of an oddball.””
“"She's different, mister. A real oddball, if you know what I mean. But your little girl would love her. All kids love the Doll Lady."”
- A deviant stimulus that appears among repetitive stimuli during an experiment, to trigger an event-related potential in the participant.