Other forms: oddities
An oddity is something strange, or the quality of being strange. A bit of an oddity, the oddity of the arrangement, collect oddities.
Of a thing it is affectionate, and of a person it is nearly so, which is what keeps it from being an insult. The abstract sense takes of after it.
1nounodditySomething strange, or the quality of being so.
“The clock was an oddity that nobody could quite date.”
oddity is a strangeness.
Proto-Indo-European
*wes- — to stick, prick, pierce, sting
Proto-Germanic
*uzdaz — point
Old Norse
oddi — odd, third or additional number; triangle
Middle English
odde
English
odd
English, today
oddity
Built from
From odd + -ity. odd comes 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”). a doublet of ord "point".
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA