Outlier

//ˈaʊtˌlaɪə(ɹ)// noun

noun ·Uncommon ·Advanced level

Definitions

Noun
  1. 1
    A person or thing situated away from the main body or outside its proper place.

    "Observing as an outlier from Scotland, Hynes sums up the industry problem: "The conversation we've had for this article is really about creating an environment in which better decisions can be taken, isn't it?"

  2. 2
    an extreme deviation from the mean wordnet
  3. 3
    An exception. figuratively

    "And in a world where police officers are mostly paired by species (zebras with zebras, hippos with hippos, etc.), Judy and Nick’s rare bunny/fox combo marks them as outliers."

  4. 4
    a person who lives away from their place of work wordnet
  5. 5
    A part of a formation separated from the rest of the formation by erosion.
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  1. 6
    A value in a statistical sample which does not fit a pattern that describes most other data points; specifically, a value that lies 1.5 IQR beyond the upper or lower quartile.

Synonyms

All synonyms
abnormalcyabnormalismabnormalityabnormityanomalydeviant

Antonyms

All antonyms
inlier

Example

More examples

"I don't like most people named Tom, except for Tom Jackson. He's the outlier."

Etymology

From outlie + -er.

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