outsider

Etymology

It is formed from English outside + -er.^{[2][3][4][5][6]} The OED derives it from the noun outside.^[2]

Earliest recorded meaning

A person who does not belong to a particular circle, community or profession: 1800, in a letter of Jane Austen.^[2][4][5]

Semantic evolution

The physical sense, a person on the outside or edge of a group or line, or beyond a boundary, is recorded from 1857, in Thomas Hughes's Tom Brown's School Days.^[2][3] In horse racing, from 1836, an outsider was a horse not among the favourites and not expected to win, and the use was soon extended to any competitor or candidate with little chance;^[2][5][3] Weekley thought the disparaging sense of the word came from this racing use.^[7] In the slang of the betting world, about 1860, an outsider was also someone who did not bet regularly or was not admitted to the betting ring,^[8] and rank outsider, first a horse at very long odds, came to mean a social inferior.^[3][8] Criminals had their own uses: from 1846 outsiders were long pincers for turning a key from the other side of a keyhole,^[2][8] and by 1865 the word also named a burglar's lookout, who kept watch while the others went in.^[8] The sense of a person isolated from conventional society, a misfit, is recorded from 1907,^[2][5][9] and was later applied to self-taught artists in the phrase outsider art.^[3] In Scots the word meant a stranger, someone not of the family.^[10]

Timeline

• 1800 – a person who does not belong to a circle or community.^[2][4][5]
• 1836 – in horse racing, a horse not expected to win.^[2][5]
• 1846 – in criminals' slang, in the plural, pincers for turning a key through a keyhole.^[2][8]
• 1857 – a person on the outside or fringe of a group.^[2]
• 1865 – a burglar's lookout.^[8]
• 1900 – an outside jaunting car (rare, obsolete).^[2]
• 1907 – a person isolated from conventional society; a misfit.^[2][5]

Meanings

Noun

1. A person who does not belong to, or is not accepted by, a particular group, community or profession: After ten years in the village she was still treated as an outsider.^{[4][11][2][12]}
2. A person who is isolated from conventional society, by choice or by circumstance; a misfit.^{[4][11][2][13]}
3. A competitor, originally a racehorse, thought to have little chance of winning: The race was won by a rank outsider.^{[2][12][11][13]}
4. A person or thing situated outside an enclosure or boundary, or on the edge of a group.^[2][3][12]
5. (Canada) In the North, a person who does not live in the Arctic.^[12]
6. (criminals' slang) In the plural, long pincers used to turn a key from the outside of a keyhole.^[4][2][3]

Word family

• outsiderness

Related words

• outside
• insider
• side

References

1. ^ Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r Oxford English Dictionary Online (accessed March 2026), Oxford: Oxford University Press
3. ^ a b c d e f g Shorter Oxford English Dictionary on Historical Principles (2002), 5th ed., ed. William R. Trumble and Angus Stevenson, Oxford: Oxford University Press
4. ^ a b c d e f Merriam-Webster Unabridged Dictionary (2024), online ed., Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster
5. ^ a b c d e f g Harper, Douglas. Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com
6. ^ Dictionary.com Unabridged (2016), based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, New York: Random House
7. ^ Weekley, Ernest (1921), An Etymological Dictionary of Modern English, London: John Murray
8. ^ a b c d e f Green, Jonathon (2010), Green's Dictionary of Slang, London: Chambers; digital ed. 2016–, https://greensdictofslang.com
9. ^ Kay, Christian; Roberts, Jane; Samuels, Michael; Wotherspoon, Irené, eds. (2009), Historical Thesaurus of the Oxford English Dictionary, Oxford: Oxford University Press; online edition (2024)
10. ^ Wright, Joseph, ed. (1898–1905), The English Dialect Dictionary, 6 vols., Oxford: Henry Frowde; via EDD Online 4.0, University of Innsbruck (CC BY 4.0)
11. ^ a b c The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (online 2024), 5th ed., Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
12. ^ a b c d Collins English Dictionary (2023), Glasgow: HarperCollins
13. ^ a b Soanes, Catherine; Stevenson, Angus, eds. (2004), Concise Oxford English Dictionary, 11th ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press