Other forms: idiosyncrasies
An idiosyncrasy is a personal quirk that belongs to one person alone. His idiosyncrasies, an odd idiosyncrasy, the idiosyncrasies of the system.
It is affectionate about people and exasperated about machines, since the idiosyncrasies of a system are the things it does that nobody can explain. The Greek means one's own mixture, from the old theory of the humours.
1nounidiosyncrasyA personal quirk that belongs to one person alone.
“One of his idiosyncrasies is that he always eats his dessert first.”
idiosyncrasy is a quirk.
It opens with the Greek for one's own, the same idio- as in idiom, a turn of phrase belonging to one language. An idiosyncrasy belongs to one person.
hooks ontoidiom
Greek idiosynkrasia means one's own temperament, from idios, own, plus synkrasis, a mixing together.
Ancient Greek
ἰδιοσυγκρασία — one’s own temperament
English, today
idiosyncrasy
Built from
First attested in 1604, in modern sense since 1665, from Ancient Greek ἰδιοσυγκρασία (“one’s own temperament”), from ἴδιος (“one’s own”) + σύν (“together”) + κρᾶσις (“temperament”). by surface analysis, idio- + syn- + -crasy.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA