outlandish
Definition, pronunciation, etymology, and usage for the English word. Free spelling reference powered by Wiktionary.
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English
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Detailed reference entry for the English word "outlandish", 10-letters, with pronunciation in International Phonetic Alphabet notation, etymology traced through Germanic and Romance roots where applicable, common misspelling variants catalogued from Hunspell error dictionaries, and usage frequency ranked against the top 100,000 English words in the Wordfreq corpus. PlainSpell covers English, Spanish, Portuguese, French, and German spelling with confusable-pair detection that highlights visually and phonetically similar words. This entry for "outlandish" includes synonyms, antonyms, homophones, and cross-language translation pointers sourced from Wiktionary via the kaikki.org extract. Whether you are verifying the correct spelling of "outlandish" for academic writing, checking homophone confusion, or exploring etymological origins, this page provides a citation-backed, free reference that requires no sign-up.
outlandish is anEnglishadj. It means: Of or from a foreign country; not indigenous or native; alien, foreign. Pronounced /ˌaʊtˈlændɪʃ/.
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Browse all word comparisons →| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Headword | outlandish |
| Language | English |
| Part of speech | Adj |
| IPA | /ˌaʊtˈlændɪʃ/ |
| Letters | 10 |
| Frequency rank | #26,539 |
| Misspellings tracked | 15 |
| Confusable pairs | 0 |
| Source | Wiktionary (kaikki.org) |
Frequency rank visualization
Spelling & Dictionary Insight
The English entry for outlandish is 10 letters long, classified as anadj, and transcribed in the International Phonetic Alphabet as /ˌaʊtˈlændɪʃ/. Corpus data places it at rank #26,539 in overall English word frequency, marking it as uncommon enough that many writers pause before typing it.Wiktionary records 4 distinct senses for this headword, so context determines which meaning a reader should apply.
Our Hunspell-derived misspelling index lists 15 documented wrong-spelling variants for outlandish, with forms such as "otulandish", "oultandish", and "outalndish". Each variant represents a distinct typo pattern that appears often enough in corpora to be worth flagging, typically a doubled-consonant error, a silent-letter drop, or a vowel substitution.It is not paired with a close-neighbour confusable in our dataset, which tends to mean the word is visually distinctive enough to stand on its own.
Etymologically, the entry records: The adjective is derived from Middle English outlandisch, outlondish (“foreign”), from Old English ūtlendisċ (“foreign; strange, outlandish”), from Proto-West Germanic *ūtlandisk, from Proto-Germanic *ūtlandiskaz, from *ūtlandą (“(adjective) alien, foreign;… Root origin matters for spelling because borrowed morphemes (Greek, Latin, Old French, Old English) carry their source-language orthographic conventions into modern English, which is why historical etymology is often the cleanest predictor of whether a cluster like "-ough", "-eau", or "-tion" will appear. For readers arriving here from a spelling check, the authoritative guidance is: the correct English form is outlandish, spelled O-U-T-L-A-N-D-I-S-H, and any other sequence of those letters, regardless of how natural it feels, is a misspelling in standard orthography.
Definition
- 1Of or from a foreign country; not indigenous or native; alien, foreign.
- 2Appearing to be foreign; strange, unfamiliar.
- 3Greatly different from common experience; bizarre, outrageous, strange.
- 4Of a place: far away from where most people are located; in the middle of nowhere, out of the way, remote.
Etymology
The adjective is derived from Middle English outlandisch, outlondish (“foreign”), from Old English ūtlendisċ (“foreign; strange, outlandish”), from Proto-West Germanic *ūtlandisk, from Proto-Germanic *ūtlandiskaz, from *ūtlandą (“(adjective) alien, foreign; relating to outlying land; (noun) foreign land; outlying land”) + *-iskaz (suffix forming adjectives from nouns with the sense ‘characteristic of; pertaining to’). *Ūtlandą is derived from *ūt- (suffix meaning ‘beyond; external to, on the outside of’) (from Proto-Indo-European *úd (“away; out, outward; upwards”)) + *landą (“area of ground, land”) (from Proto-Indo-European *lendʰ- (“heath; land”)). By surface analysis, outland + -ish. The noun is derived from the adjective. Cognates * Danish udenlandsk (“foreign, non-domestic”) * Dutch uitlands (dated) (now buitenlands (“foreign, non-domestic”)), Dutch uitlandig (“absent from the home country”) (now chiefly Suriname) * Faroese útlendskur (“foreign, non-domestic”) * German ausländisch (“foreign, non-domestic”) * Icelandic útlenskur (“foreign”) * Swedish utländsk (“foreign, non-domestic”)
This word in other languages
Common misspellings
Also misspelled as: otulandish,oultandish,outalndish,outladnish,outlanddish,outlandihs,outlandishh,outlandissh,outlandsih,outlanidsh,outlanndish,outllandish,outlnadish,outtlandish,uotlandish
Misspelling Pattern Breakdown
Relative frequency of common misspelling types for outlandish
Misspelling Variants of "outlandish"
Frequency rank: #26,539 in English
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Nearby English words
Other entries that begin with the letter O in our English index: