Bazaar or bizarre?
bazaar is a noun meaning “A marketplace, particularly in the Middle East and South Asia, and often…”; bizarre is an adjective meaning “Strangely unconventional; highly unusual and different from common experience…”. Use bazaar as a noun and bizarre as an adjective (bizarre is also a noun: “A carnation having stripes of two distinct colours on the…”). In written English (wordfreq, 2021 data) bizarre is about 4.5 times as common as bazaar.
What is the difference between bazaar and bizarre?
| bazaar | bizarre | |
|---|---|---|
| Part of speech | noun | adjective, noun |
| Meaning | A marketplace, particularly in the Middle East and South Asia, and often covered with shops and stalls A shop selling articles that are either exotic or eclectic | Strangely unconventional; highly unusual and different from common experience, often in an extravagant, fantastic, and/or conspicuous way A carnation having stripes of two distinct colours on the white petals A tulip with a certain pattern of various colored stripes |
| Example | none recorded | That was a bizarre adventure! |
| Forms | bazaars | bizarrer, bizarrest |
| Pronunciation | /bəˈzɑː(ɹ)/ /bəˈzɑɹ/ [bɪ̈ˈzɑɹ] | /bɪˈzɑː(ɹ)/ /bəˈzɑː(ɹ)/ /bɪˈzɑɹ/ |
| In writing | 2.3 times per million words | 10 times per million words |
Sources: bazaar and bizarre in the English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0); written frequency: wordfreq 3.1 (a 2021 snapshot of Wikipedia, subtitles, news, books, web text and social media).
Every current meaning of bazaar and bizarre
bazaar
- 1
A marketplace, particularly in the Middle East and South Asia, and often covered with shops and stalls
- 2
A shop selling articles that are either exotic or eclectic
- 3
A fair or temporary market, often for charity
bizarre
- 1
Strangely unconventional; highly unusual and different from common experience, often in an extravagant, fantastic, and/or conspicuous way
That was a bizarre adventure!
- 2
A carnation having stripes of two distinct colours on the white petals
- 3
A tulip with a certain pattern of various colored stripes
Source: the English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0); obsolete, archaic, dialect and rare senses left out.
Which is more common, bazaar or bizarre?
bazaar appears 2.3 times per million words; bizarre 10 times per million words.
bazaar 2.3 times per million wordsbizarre 10 times per million words
Source: written frequency: wordfreq 3.1 (a 2021 snapshot of Wikipedia, subtitles, news, books, web text and social media).
How many people search bazaar vs bizarre?
“bazaar vs bizarre” is searched about 110 times a month on Google and 20 on Bing in the United States. Google counts close variants of a query together (“bizarre vs bazaar”, “bazaar or bizarre”).
Sources: Google Ads keyword data through DataForSEO and Microsoft Advertising keyword data through DataForSEO, the average month from September 2025 to August 2026.