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eccentric
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  • Settlers arrived--mostly wayward souls and eccentrics who had meandered off the Oregon Trail.   (source)
    eccentrics = unconventional or strange people
  • ...and our classmates mercifully let us forget our father's eccentricities.   (source)
    eccentricities = strange behaviors
  • We had been ... undirected except by the eccentric notions of Phineas.   (source)
    eccentric = unconventional or strange
  • The creature was a party of boys, marching approximately in step in two parallel lines and dressed in strangely eccentric clothing.   (source)
  • He struck most of the friends he had made on Earth as an eccentric, but a harmless one—an unruly boozer with some oddish habits.   (source)
    eccentric = a person who is unconventional or strange
  • It was his one eccentricity.   (source)
    eccentricity = unconventional or strange behavior
  • But in spite of all that, if there was one race the People felt an affinity for it was the Irish. Perhaps it was their eccentricity, perhaps their dedication to the craic, as they called it.   (source)
  • The only dwarves who go in them are eccentrics who don't want contact with anyone.   (source)
    eccentrics = people who are strange or unconventional
  • She's irresponsible and slightly eccentric, and she's a me.   (source)
    eccentric = unconventional or strange
  • Who knows, perhaps they're all your own invention, and this Capricorn is just a rather eccentric book collector!   (source)
  • One might say he typified the phrase 'eccentric genius.'   (source)
  • In case you haven't seen The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, it is set during World War II when the Pevensie kids are evacuated to London to the home of an eccentric professor.   (source)
  • Carrel's eccentricities fed into the media frenzy about his work.   (source)
    eccentricities = unconventional or strange behaviors
  • He was rather eccentric, a little crazy, I think.   (source)
    eccentric = unconventional or strange
  • Her courage could just as well have been described as eccentricity.   (source)
    eccentricity = unconventional or strange behavior
  • An eccentric recluse who spends most of his time shooting wild game.   (source)
    eccentric = unconventional or strange
  • It captured the closeness and eccentricity about them that I loved--two people, so alike, caught in a crazy moment of their own making.   (source)
    eccentricity = unconventional behavior
  • He quickly makes himself at home, acting like an eccentric and gabby uncle who's dropped by after a long absence.   (source)
    eccentric = unconventional or strange behaving
  • She ... was a bit of a happy eccentric in the village.   (source)
    eccentric = a person who is unconventional or strange
  • The jag's eccentric.   (source)
    eccentric = unconventional or strange
  • Now that Ruth could no longer blame her mother's problems on the eccentricities of her personality, she saw the signs of dementia everywhere.   (source)
    eccentricities = unconventional or strange behaviors
  • He's eccentric, but he's one of the oldest Lares.   (source)
    eccentric = unconventional or strange
  • Oh, don't be so proud of yourself, Bennie—just because you look eccentric.   (source)
  • No obviously bad effects were noticed from these ill-advised unions, but one or two old maids or gardener boys marked a weakening of faculties and a disposition toward eccentricity in some of the children.   (source)
    eccentricity = unconventional or strange behavior
  • And even though I loved my sister had accepted her eccentricities I found it hard to listen to detailed descriptions, abstract ambitions, relevant observations, hers and mine.   (source)
    eccentricities = unconventional or strange behaviors
  • She well knew how eccentric he seemed to others; he seemed so to her, for that matter.   (source)
    eccentric = unconventional or strange
  • She announced to her husband (whom she now considered a difficult drunk rather than an eccentric) that she was leaving him.   (source)
  • You're turning into an old eccentric.   (source)
    eccentric = someone who is unconventional or strange
  • Bobby Bragg, a white-haired little man, was what we would now call an eccentric.   (source)
    eccentric = a person who is unconventional or strange
  • Some said his life-style was calculated...that he created the image of an eccentric for effect.   (source)
  • Mike learned fast; soon he sounded as human as anybody--no more eccentric than other Loonies.   (source)
    eccentric = unconventional or strange
  • You know, eccentric artist and all that.   (source)
  • "I'm serious," Longstreet said amiably "A little eccentricity is a help to a general."   (source)
    eccentricity = quality of being unconventional or strange
  • "We have had such a time laughing over Fred buying that taxicab." She nudged my mother's arm. "It's a hoot. I think it's really—" She paused, taking her time. "It's eccentric."   (source)
    eccentric = unconventional or strange
  • And what earlier ages would have called vice was now no more than eccentricity--or, at the worst, bad manners.   (source)
    eccentricity = strange
  • he knew himself ... this Siddhartha, the eccentric, the weird one,   (source)
    eccentric = unconventional or strange
  • ...ownlife, it was called, meaning individualism and eccentricity.   (source)
    eccentricity = unconventional or strange behavior
  • "Alcohol in his blood-surrogate," was Fanny's explanation of every eccentricity.   (source)
  • I gave people more than I took. Middle-aged people I gave back a feeling of youth. Lonely girls? Understanding, Appreciation! An absolutely convincing show of affection. Sad people, lost people? Something light and uplifting! Eccentrics? Tolerance, even odd things they long for...   (source)
    eccentrics = people who are strange or unconventional
  • harmless eccentricities   (source)
    eccentricities = unconventional or strange behaviors
  • For example, if a man insists on going out and squatting about in nothing but a loincloth his conduct seems eccentric in the extreme.   (source)
    eccentric = unconventional or strange
  • Easy now, it's no disgrace. It's just eccentric. ... That you can't see somebody with something broken without wanting to fix it.   (source)
  • The "Avenue," so called by the Newbridge people, was a stretch of road four or five hundred yards long, completely arched over with huge, wide-spreading apple-trees, planted years ago by an eccentric old farmer.   (source)
  • He thought it eccentric of Lancelot,   (source)
  • Well, how can any one tell what's eccentric and what's crazy?   (source)
  • An eccentric, perhaps,   (source)
    eccentric = someone who is unconventional or strange
  • Eliza, it's quite true that your father is not a snob, and that he will be quite at home in any station of life to which his eccentric destiny may call him.   (source)
    eccentric = unconventional or strange
  • He so crowded on my mind his list of nature's eccentricities and possible impossibilities that my imagination was getting fired.   (source)
    eccentricities = unconventional or strange behaviors
  • We must always bear in mind what an eccentric bringing-up Medora Manson gave her.   (source)
    eccentric = unconventional or strange
  • He was eccentric, I admit.   (source)
  • Lima was a city of eccentrics, but even there she became its jest as she drove through the streets or shuffled up the steps of its churches.   (source)
    eccentrics = people who are strange or unconventional
  • Sir Charles was a widower, and a man who may be said to have been in some ways of an eccentric habit of mind.   (source)
    eccentric = unconventional or strange
  • This creature will only think that I am an eccentric Englishwoman   (source)
  • a beard of bristling eccentricity.   (source)
    eccentricity = unconventional or strange appearance
  • M. de Charlus was somewhat inclined to eccentricity,   (source)
    eccentricity = unconventional or strange behavior
  • "Auntie gets more eccentric lately," she said nervously.   (source)
    eccentric = unconventional or strange
  • The first was a will, drawn in the same eccentric terms as the one which he had returned six months before,   (source)
  • Doubtless Lizabetha Prokofievna was considered "eccentric" in society, but she was none the less esteemed:   (source)
  • the eccentric nature of my father   (source)
  • This wild eccentric becomes interesting!   (source)
    eccentric = person who is unconventional or strange
  • You know that Mr. Fogg is very eccentric.   (source)
    eccentric = unconventional or strange
  • the eccentric costume   (source)
  • This was an extensive and magnificent structure, the creation of the prince's own eccentric yet august taste.   (source)
    eccentric = unconventional
  • Of my brilliant mother, midwife and entrepreneur; of my eccentric father, junkman and zealot.†   (source)
  • Despite his eccentricities, no one ever questioned Halliday's genius.†   (source)
  • For several years, I had been dating a man named Eric, a friend of one of Lori's eccentric-genius friends, who came from a wealthy family, ran a small company, and lived alone in the apartment on Park Avenue in which he'd been raised.†   (source)
  • Super Man's eccentric fuel gauges, which had been jiggling around, had settled very low.†   (source)
  • Although the will you are about to hear may seem eccentric, I pledge my good name and reputation on its legality.†   (source)
  • Was this some new mortification of the flesh, or was it simple eccentricity, or had she simply forgotten?†   (source)
  • The young man exchanged a brief glance with his companion as if to say, Who is this eccentric?†   (source)
  • Families, teachers, and courts were sending thousands to institutions for eccentricities that were less attributable to acute mental illness than resistance to social, cultural, or sexual norms.†   (source)
  • Eccentrics thrived.†   (source)
  • First a corsair's cellar, built to safeguard gold, weapons, an eccentric's beekeeping equipment.†   (source)
  • Better to have them think I'm a little eccentric than a sheep killer, right?†   (source)
  • Or just an eccentric fellow Circler.†   (source)
  • "To our younger parish officers," he said, "you're something of an eccentric.†   (source)
  • To strip off like that—yes, her endearing attempt to seem eccentric, her stab at being bold had an exaggerated, homemade quality.†   (source)
  • "It will be a miracle if you can find something suitable to wear that will hide your"—her gaze dropped to Cinder's boots—"eccentricities.†   (source)
  • She had black hair, fair skin that freckled in summer, china-blue eyes with a lot of light in them; and in the slant of her cheekbones there was such an eccentric mixture of the tribal and the Celtic Twilight that sometimes people guessed she was Icelandic.†   (source)
  • Chacko had been a Rhodes Scholar at Oxford and was permitted excesses and eccentricities nobody else was.†   (source)
  • It's no wonder that many arcanists you meet are a little eccentric, if not downright cracked.†   (source)
  • I secretly admired Tia Chucha, the most creative influence in my childhood, while others talked holier-than-thou about her irreverence, her eccentricities, as if the craziness didn't threaten to thunder out of any of us at one time or another.†   (source)
  • The magazine was Organic Gardening, which was launched in 1942 by the eccentric J.I. Rodale and went on to become the bible of the back-to-the-earth movement that blossomed in the 1960s and 1970s.†   (source)
  • A stated reason to go there: she has been made executor of the will of her former lover, a fabulously wealthy and eccentric businessman and stamp collector.†   (source)
  • When Josh had started working in the bookshop for the man he knew then as Nick Fleming, he'd thought he was a little strange, eccentric, maybe even a little weird.†   (source)
  • Eccentric, but that was expected of any Awer.†   (source)
  • A worker might be ordered to perform a certain task—for example, to install the gas nozzle inside the big walk-in vault—but in the narrow context within which the worker functioned, the assignment could seem reasonable or at worst merely eccentric.†   (source)
  • Their eccentricities, however, were among the most tolerated in the military service.†   (source)
  • She had helped at her birth and was the only one who really understood the child's eccentricities.†   (source)
  • It was strange; she had always been particular about meals, fearing undisciplined snacking as a sign of eccentricity and self-absorbed solitude, but now she ate at odd hours: cold cereal straight from the box, ice cream spooned from the carton while standing at her kitchen counter.†   (source)
  • But it is out of respect for your views, Mr Lewis, that I feel one should not simply cast them to one side as though they were uttered by some soap-box eccentric.†   (source)
  • The idea that you are what you eat has been enthusiastically promoted for years by Den Fujita, the eccentric billionaire who brought McDonald's to Japan three decades ago.†   (source)
  • It's kind of ...eccentric, you know?†   (source)
  • I noticed at once the bobbing of his head, as if an eccentric flywheel turned within him.†   (source)
  • The Passmores were tender of each other's eccentricities, admiring of each other's virtues.†   (source)
  • David had always been odd, but his oddities were formerly marked by a cheerful, eccentric quality—the endearments of distracted genius.†   (source)
  • Lee might have been a character out of an English novel, such were his eccentricities and colorful past.†   (source)
  • Orr was an eccentric midget, a freakish, likable dwarf with a smutty mind and a thousand valuable skills that would keep him in a low income group all his life.†   (source)
  • But on return visits, they soon chalked the talk up to Mortenson's eccentricity and settled in to wait while he shook the hand of every student and asked them what they wanted to be one day, promising to help them reach those goals if they studied hard.†   (source)
  • Contact with the enemy was negligible, except in the case of one Marine from the 3rd Platoon, a blacksmith's son and bona fide eccentric from Montana named Don Ruhl.†   (source)
  • Each agent had a code name; these were chosen by the British, not us, and they were quite eccentric.†   (source)
  • The eccentric, alcoholic doctor would have been overjoyed with ten or fifteen thousand pounds; he had more than a million dollars.†   (source)
  • On a farm near the sea, a woman who tended her appearance reaped a reputation for eccentricity.†   (source)
  • But no one was listening at that time and they only thought him eccentric at first, then undesirable, then slightly mad, and then genuinely insane.†   (source)
  • Eccentricity.†   (source)
  • You've been very patient dealing with my ...eccentricities.†   (source)
  • "Good day!" she calls cheerily to a milkman, who regards her warily, as if she were someone's eccentric aunt let out of the attic.†   (source)
  • He had few friends, and, when not forgotten, he was considered eccentric.†   (source)
  • Nearer was an Oscar-nominated actor and well-known heroin addict in an eccentric outfit fumbled from the closet in a state of chemical bliss: black loafers without socks, green-plaid golf pants, a brown-checkered sports jacket, and a pale-blue denim shirt.†   (source)
  • In his play Clouds, first produced in 423 B.C.E., Aristophanes presents Socrates as an eccentric and comic headmaster of a "thinkery" (or "thoughtery").†   (source)
  • His eccentricities are chalked up to his being a famous actor.†   (source)
  • Eccentrics can be the most irritating people to live with.†   (source)
  • I just thought all the eccentric things she did were normal.†   (source)
  • Very eccentric orbits.†   (source)
  • And I have a husband who loves me despite his eccentricities and my ample faults.†   (source)
  • Search terms: unusual Indiana attractions, nothing ordinary Indiana, unique Indiana, eccentric Indiana.†   (source)
  • Gabriel had come to Paris because he needed a van Gogh as bait in order to insert an agent into the entourage of Zizi al-Bakari, and he had heard from an old friend in London, a wildly eccentric art dealer named Julian Isherwood, that Hannah Weinberg was in possession of one.†   (source)
  • She is formidable and eccentric in the eyes of everyone, is scarcely accepted in the town.†   (source)
  • This was not the eccentric fantasia of my childhood.†   (source)
  • All with an eccentricity that verged on madness, born of the times they lived in.†   (source)
  • In my opinion—if you'll excuse me saying this about your friend—he was far too excitable, a bit wild, an eccentric.†   (source)
  • All the rest were lolling eccentrically with an air of exaggerated and assumed ease.†   (source)
  • But acting without selfish motive or private bias, those who follow the dictates of an intelligent conscience are not aristocrats, demagogues, eccentrics or callous politicians insensitive to the feelings of the public.†   (source)
  • In this country, eccentricity is not a punishable offense.
  • Eccentricity is not, as dull people would have us believe, a form of madness. It is often a kind of innocent pride, and the man of genius and the aristocrat are frequently regarded as eccentrics because genius and aristocrat are entirely unafraid of and uninfluenced by the opinions and vagaries of the crowd.   (source)
  • She can afford eccentricity.
  • It may occur to you that I am eccentric, perhaps mad.   (source)
    eccentric = unconventional or strange
  • You always want to make folks think you're eccentric, Mart.   (source)
  • month after month she became more eccentric and unreliable.   (source)
  • But he looked as though he were doing this eccentric thing to amuse himself.   (source)
  • bringing the most eccentric characters to dinner,   (source)
  • they are used to thinking of me as eccentric.   (source)
  • Unhappy as was the Bohemian, this eccentric being still aroused some compassion in her.   (source)
  • as eccentric an old bachelor, as will be found   (source)
  • he is a very rich Englishman, eccentric almost to insanity, and his real name is Lord Wilmore.   (source)
    eccentric = unconventional
  • It was a charming place (none the worse for being a little eccentric),   (source)
    eccentric = unconventional or strange
  • ...it was reckoned merely an eccentric whim,   (source)
  • After all, if these people had strange fads and expected obedience on the most extraordinary matters, they were at least ready to pay for their eccentricity.   (source)
    eccentricity = unconventional or strange behavior
  • My pockets had always puzzled Weena, but at the last she had concluded that they were an eccentric kind of vase for floral decoration.   (source)
    eccentric = unconventional or strange
  • But with Mrs Wititterly the two titles were all sufficient; coarseness became humour, vulgarity softened itself down into the most charming eccentricity...   (source)
    eccentricity = unconventional behavior
  • From these pilgrimages to the jug and basin, he returned with such eccentricities of damp headgear as no words can describe; which were made the more ludicrous by his anxious gravity.   (source)
    eccentricities = things reflecting unconventional or strange behavior
  • I then assured the functionary that Bartleby was a perfectly honest man, and greatly to be compassionated, however unaccountably eccentric.   (source)
    eccentric = unconventional or strange
  • He cupped his hand over the mouthpiece and said, "Still as eccentric as ever.†   (source)
  • Now, in the old days, Indians used to be forgiving of any kind of eccentricity.†   (source)
  • What vistas of shining eccentricity, or madness?†   (source)
  • Her eccentricities are well tolerated, though, because of her incredible skill and accomplishments.†   (source)
  • If a people accepts their own eccentricities, they can justify anything they do.†   (source)
  • She grew accustomed to her grandmother's eccentricities.†   (source)
  • A small cadre of racetrack eccentrics gathered around him.†   (source)
  • Eccentricities and irregularities are to be expected from him.†   (source)
  • "No," she said, "I'm pregnant and I'm allowed my eccentricities; the doctor said so.†   (source)
  • "Let some of the orbital eccentricity work out of that," Tyler said.†   (source)
  • Due to orbital eccentricities, the VLA was currently about halfway around the sun from Earth.†   (source)
  • Graham may have been the strangest of eccentrics, but she was loyal.†   (source)
  • That left only Jan. George wondered what he thought of his brother-in-law's eccentricities.†   (source)
  • In the end, he simply chalked it up to Peter's eccentricity and locked the package in his library's wall safe, eventually forgetting all about it.†   (source)
  • The townspeople enjoyed them in the manner that only people from small towns—who know how everyone's apron is tied, and by whom—can enjoy tedious eccentrics.†   (source)
  • Moreover, the artist's eerie eccentricities projected an admittedly demonic aura: Da Vinci exhumed corpses to study human anatomy; he kept mysterious journals in illegible reverse handwriting; he believed he possessed the alchemic power to turn lead into gold and even cheat God by creating an elixir to postpone death; and his inventions included horrific, never-before-imagined weapons of war and torture.†   (source)
  • Though as with so many Awers, there was a practical edge to her eccentricity—we were very near the docks here.†   (source)
  • Those self-important women gained local immortality for the blandest, the most timid of eccentricities—walking a cat on a dog's lead, riding about on a man's bike, being seen with a sandwich in the street.†   (source)
  • Over the years, Sylvie had programmed herself to ignore Kohler's bizarre mood swings and eccentricities-his silent treatments, his unnerving propensity to secretly film meetings with his wheelchair's porta-video.†   (source)
  • She sipped her tea, then changed the subject: the families up and down South Beach, she said, were thought of by folks in Amity Harbor as self-styled aristocrats and malcontents, seclusion seekers and eccentrics—Ishmael's family included.†   (source)
  • The Dowlings were tedious, their eccentricity was flawed and made small by the utter predictability of their highly selective passions; yet they were a fixture of The Gravesend Players that provided constant, if familiar, entertainment.†   (source)
  • Of course, ever since white people showed up and brought along their Christianity and their fears of eccentricity, Indians have gradually lost all of their tolerance.†   (source)
  • They remembered the eccentricities of various patients, and they shared grievances—Fiona was outraged that she wasn't allowed to keep things on her windowsill, Briony hated the eleven o'clock lights-out—but they did so with self-conscious enjoyment and increasingly with a great deal of giggling, so that heads began to turn in their direction, and fingers were laid theatrically over lips.†   (source)
  • If, at Gravesend Academy, The Voice had persuaded the majority of the faculty that his eccentricities and peculiarities were not only his individual rights but were inseparable from his generally acknowledged brilliance, the more diverse but also more specialized faculty at the University of New Hampshire were not interested in "the whole boy," not at all; they were not even a community, the university faculty, and they shared no general opinion that Owen Meany was brilliant, they expressed no general concern that his individual rights needed protection, and they had no tolerance for eccentricities and peculiarities.†   (source)
  • In the short while since the Varden and the Surdans had launched their attack against the Empire, Nasuada had watchedOrrin grow ever more serious, his original enthusiasm and eccentricities vanishing beneath a grim exterior.†   (source)
  • To almost everyone in the jockeys' room, Woolf's perpetual sleepiness was just another of his many eccentricities.†   (source)
  • BENEATHA ignores the eccentricity of his actions and goes on with the monologue of insult) Did you dream of yachts on Lake Michigan, Brother?†   (source)
  • Her eccentricities were no longer provocative and the stupefying ease with which he had gotten and stayed between her legs had changed from the great good fortune he'd considered it, to annoyance at her refusal to make him hustle for it, work for it, do something difficult for it.†   (source)
  • His current friends—Sewall, Richard Cranch, Parson Anthony Wibird—were to be his friends to the last, despite drastic changes in circumstance, differing temperaments, eccentricities, or politics.†   (source)
  • Despite these precautions, from the very first day, the headmistress had no trouble discerning the eccentricities of her new pupil.†   (source)
  • Until that day they had never given a name to the eccentricities of their youngest daughter, nor had it ever crossed their minds to ascribe them to satanic influence.†   (source)
  • There is too much orbital eccentricity in the satellite, which makes it harder for the computer to adjust to the wobble.†   (source)
  • "If you don't die of a snakebite or some foreign plague, I hope you return a man, because I'm fed up with all your eccentricities," his father told him when he said goodbye to him on the pier.†   (source)
  • Ferula's affection for her sister-in-law became a passion, a dedication to waiting on her and caring for her and an unlimited tolerance for her distractions and eccentricities.†   (source)
  • The big house on the corner was sadder and older than I had remembered, and looked absurd, with its architectural eccentricities, its pretensions to French style, its facade covered with diseased ivy.†   (source)
  • The hot summers at Tres Marias, where she discovered the strength of a love that grew as she did, alternating with the routine of the city, was not unlike that of other girls of her age and class, although Clara's presence added a note of eccentricity to her life.†   (source)
  • Nicolas inherited the adventurous spirit of his great-uncle Marcos and his mother's propensity for making up astrological charts and reading the future, but this did not constitute a major crime in the rigid code of the school, only an eccentricity, so he fared far better there than his brother.†   (source)
  • Her Grandmother Clara managed to keep that immense covered wagon of a house rolling with its population of eccentrics, even though she had no domestic talent and disdained the basic operations, of arithmetic to the point of forgetting how to add.†   (source)
  • He tried to tell himself that his son's eccentricities would disappear with age, and that sooner or later he would become a well-adjusted man who would join him in his business and become his support in his old age.†   (source)
  • My pre-Yamacraw theory of teaching held several sacred tenets, among these being that the teacher must always maintain an air of insanity, or of eccentricity out of control, if he is to catch and hold the attention of his students.†   (source)
  • Marina forgave the doctor his eccentricities, the dirt and disorder he made in the house, his moods and his fancies; they were those of a man who was letting himself go and knew it.†   (source)
  • After the hideous uniformity in dress of the postwar scene, especially in a man-trap like McGraw-Hill, what really was more refreshing to the eye than a little quaintness, a bit of eccentricity?†   (source)
  • This puzzled Antipova and angered the doctor; but, like all eccentrics, Mademoiselle cherished her illusions and would not be parted from them at any price.†   (source)
  • I think that in my growing fondness for him I, an only child, had begun to see in him a little of the older brother I had never had—a brother, furthermore, whose charm and warmth so outweighed the unpredictable and bizarre in him that I was swift to put his eccentricities quite out of my head.†   (source)
  • Under the old order, which enabled those whose lives were secure to play the fools and eccentrics at the expense of the others while the majority led a wretched existence, it had been only too easy to mistake the foolishness and idleness of a privileged minority for genuine character and originality.†   (source)
  • But there was suffering too, and it was in the early hours of those mornings when, time after time, I would steal away with Mary Alice that I found myself exposed, literally, to a form of sexual eccentricity I had never dreamed existed and have never experienced since.†   (source)
  • She worked as a cleaning woman and was a bit of a happy eccentric in the village.†   (source)
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