Word.ws English Dictionary

making strange

making strange is the present participle and gerund of make strange.

Meaning of make strange

Verb

make strange (third-person singular simple present makes strange, present participle making strange, simple past and past participle made strange)

  1. (especially, idiomatic) To behave in a shy, uncommunicative, resistant manner when encountering an unfamiliar person or situation.
    • Come to Granny. You must surely be making strange, with all these foreign faces huffing and puffing around you, you poor little precious diddledums.2009, Martha Long, Ma, It's a Cold Aul Night an I'm Lookin for a Bed (2015 Seven Stories Press edition), (Google preview)

Questions about making strange

What is making strange the present participle and gerund of?
Making strange is the present participle and gerund of make strange.

Words near making strange in the dictionary

  1. making someone's toenails curl
  2. making someone's toes curl
  3. making something of
  4. making something of oneself
  5. making sport of
  6. making strange
  7. making streaks
  8. making strides
  9. making sure
  10. making terms
  11. making the bald man cry

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: making strange (page history and authors); make strange (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Cite this entry: “making strange.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/making_strange. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.