All 4 Uses of
eccentric
in
The Scarlet Letter
- It was as if she had been made afresh out of new elements, and must perforce be permitted to live her own life, and be a law unto herself without her eccentricities being reckoned to her for a crime.†
p. 124.7 *eccentricities = unconventional or strange behaviors
- The minister was glad to have reached this shelter, without first betraying himself to the world by any of those strange and wicked eccentricities to which he had been continually impelled while passing through the streets.†
p. 207.9
- Another shade of the same sentiment, in reference to Mr. Dimmesdale, was expressed by a person whose eccentricities—insanity, as we should term it—led her to do what few of the townspeople would have ventured on—to begin a conversation with the wearer of the scarlet letter in public.†
p. 224.4
- The Puritans looked on, and, if they smiled, were none the less inclined to pronounce the child a demon offspring, from the indescribable charm of beauty and eccentricity that shone through her little figure, and sparkled with its activity.†
p. 228.1eccentricity = unconventional or strange behavior
Definitions:
-
(1)
(eccentric) unconventional or strange; or a person with such traits -- often in a way that seems interesting or harmless
-
(2)
(meaning too rare to warrant focus) meaning too rare to warrant focus:
Much more rarely, in technical usage, eccentric can mean "not concentric".