Word.ws English Dictionary

out-of-character

out-of-character is the alternative form of out of character.

Meaning of out of character

Prepositional phrase

  1. (idiomatic) Inconsistent with someone's personality, disposition, or usual expected behaviour.
    • The burst of anger was out of character for the normally placid boy.
  2. (idiomatic) Not in character; not in the zone; not successfully performing within the mindset of a given character in a theatrical performance.
    • I was out of character for most of the first act because those people in the third row wouldn't stop chatting.
  3. (idiomatic, roleplaying games) Not acting; not "on"; behaving within one's natural personality rather than that of a character, or taking actions entirely outside the fictional context.
    • After watching him perform so energetically, it is a bit of a trip to hang out with him when he's out of character. In real life, he's really mellow.

Forms of out-of-character

comparativemore out-of-character
superlativemost out-of-character

Questions about out-of-character

What is out-of-character the alternative form of?
Out-of-character is the alternative form of out of character.

Words near out-of-character in the dictionary

  1. out-of-body experience
  2. out-of-body experiences
  3. out-of-bounds
  4. out-of-box experience
  5. out-of-box experiences
  6. out-of-character
  7. out-of-college
  8. out-of-context
  9. out-of-control
  10. out-of-course
  11. out-of-court

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: out-of-character (page history and authors); out of character (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:

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