oddball
noun

- a person whose behaviour is unusual and strange

adjective (placed before a noun)

- unusual and strange

Cambridge Advanced Learner's Dictionary

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WORD ORIGIN

Oddball, which first came into use around the late 1940s and is composed of odd (strange) and ball, which in this case was simply added to form a compound noun to describe an unusual person.

Odd goes to back to the 14th century and the Old Norse "oddi", which literally meant point or angle, a reference to a triangle. It later took on the additional meaning of a third or additional number, leading to the present day sense of an odd (uneven) number.

Odd, in the sense of strange or unusual, was first recorded at the end of the 16th century and comes from the notion of "the odd one out", or an unconventional person.

Apart from oddball, there are odd jobs, so called because they are not related to regular employment, and odd lot, which refers to an incomplete or random set.

And then there are the Odd Fellows, or officially the Independent Order Of Odd Fellows. The IOOF is a fraternal organisation founded in 18th century England with the goal of giving aid to people in need and pursuing projects for the benefit of mankind. Why they chose the "odd" name for the organisation has never been fully explained.

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SYNONYMS
(noun)

case, character, coot, crackpot, freak, fruitcake, geek, gonzo, goof ball, heretic, kook, loner, maverick, nonconformist, nut, nut cake, odd person, original, queer duck, rare bird, screwball, three-dollar bill, weirdo, wacko, wombat, zombie

(adjective)
aberrant, abnormal, anomalous, bizarre, capricious, cockeyed, crazy, curious, droll, erratic, far out, flaky, freaky, funky, funny, geeky, goony, idiosyncratic, irregular, kooky, nutty, odd, off-centre, offbeat, outlandish, peculiar, quaint, queer, quirky, quizzical, screwy, singular, strange, uncommon, unconventional, unnatural, unusual, way out, weird, wacky, whimsical, wild

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ANTONYMS

(noun)
bore, conformer, conformist, conventionalist, traditionalist

(adjective)
common, conventional, dull, normal, ordinary, usual

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Practice OWAD in a conversation:

"You are sure to meet ODDBALLS in all organizations of any size."