Word.ws English Dictionary

oddball

US/ˈɑːdˌbɔl/

oddball noun: an eccentric or unusual person.

Noun

oddball (plural oddballs)

  1. An eccentric or unusual person.
    • Miss Quinn thought that Oswald spoke Russian well in view of his lack of formal training; she found the evening uninteresting. Donovan, with whom she had a date later, testified that she told him that Oswald was “kind of an oddball.”1964, Earl Warren et al., Report of the President's Commission on the Assassination of President John F. Kennedy, page 685
    • "She's different, mister. A real oddball, if you know what I mean. But your little girl would love her. All kids love the Doll Lady."1989, Maris Soule, Storybook Hero, page 5
    Synonyms:
    kook
  2. A deviant stimulus that appears among repetitive stimuli during an experiment, to trigger an event-related potential in the participant.

Adjective

oddball (not comparable)

  1. Exotic, not mainstream.
    • An oddball word processor, for example, might never be supported by such helpful tools as spelling checkers, indexing programs, footnote utilities,...1984, Steven K. Roberts, The Complete Guide to Microsystem Management

oddball meaning in Urdu and Indonesian

oddball in Urdu

عجیب و غریب, بےتکا, سنکی

oddball in Indonesian

eccentric person
miring

Synonyms of oddball

All synonyms of oddball

Forms of oddball

pluraloddballs

Plural of oddball: oddballs

Origin of oddball

Compound of odd + ball. First used in late 1930s, describing an extra ball played as a bonus in pin-ball type games. Well-attested since the 1940s, with the adjective appearing earlier than the noun.

Words formed from oddball

Questions about oddball

What does oddball mean?
Oddball means an eccentric or unusual person.
What is oddball in Urdu?
Oddball in Urdu is عجیب و غریب, بےتکا, سنکی. See Oddball meaning in Urdu.
What part of speech is oddball?
Oddball can be a noun or an adjective.
How do you pronounce oddball?
Oddball is pronounced /ˈɑːdˌbɔl/ (US).
What is the plural of oddball?
The plural of oddball is oddballs.

Words near oddball in the dictionary

  1. odd-toed
  2. odd-toed ungulate
  3. odd-toed ungulates
  4. odda
  5. Oddar Meanchey
  6. oddball
  7. oddballery
  8. oddballish
  9. oddballs
  10. oddbod
  11. oddbods

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: oddball (page history and authors); oddball (Urdu Wiktionary) (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.

Last updated:

Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Vealhurl-oddball.wav.

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