Otherness

noun

noun ·3 syllables ·Uncommon ·Advanced level

Definitions

Noun
  1. 1
    The quality of being different or distinct. uncountable

    "As Floya Anthias argues in her chapter, there is a need to fight against all those constructions of difference and identity that exclude and devalorise, and against all those social practices that construct identities and differences in naturalised, collectivised and binary ways and in terms of hierarchical otherness, unequal resource allocation and modes of inferiorisation (see also Anthias 1998a)."

  2. 2
    the quality of being not alike; being distinct or different from that otherwise experienced or known wordnet
  3. 3
    The result or product of being different or distinct. countable

Synonyms

All synonyms
alterityalteritycontrarietycontrastdeparturedeviation

Example

More examples

"History is a journey into otherness."

Etymology

From other + -ness.

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Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.