Outcast Meaning
/ˈaʊtkɑːst/Definition, CEFR level B2, pronunciation, examples, and quiz.
Listen pronunciation
Definition
verbTo cast out; to banish.
adjThat has been cast out; banished, ostracized.
Sentence Examples
I felt like an outcast among those people.
Tom is an outcast.
Synonyms & Antonyms
Synonyms:
Antonyms:
None
CEFR Practice Quiz
Because he broke all the rules, the tribe treated him as an ____.
CEFR Practice Quiz (Alternate)
After the scandal, he felt like a social ____, avoided by former friends and colleagues alike.
Word Origin & History
From Middle English outcasten, equivalent to out- + cast.
Literary Quotations & Historical Citations
"And her faire yellow locks behind her flew, / Looſely diſperſt with puff of euery blaſt: / All as a blazing ſtarre doth farre outcaſt / His hearie beames, and flaming lockes diſpredd, / At ſight whereof the people ſtand aghaſt: […]"
— 1590, Edmund Spenser, “Book III, Canto I”, in The Faerie Queene. […], London: […] [John Wolfe] for William Ponsonbie, →OCLC, stanza 16, page 395:
"It means equal ruin to me, as the world reckons it — outcasting, the loss of my appointment, the breaking off my life's work. I pay my price."
— 1889, Rudyard Kipling, “The Hill of Illusion”, in Under the Deodars, Boston: The Greenock Press, published 1899, page 84:
"O, horrible fate! Outcast, rejected, / As one with pestilence infected!"
— 1851, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, The Golden Legend, Boston, Mass.: Ticknor, Reed, and Fields, →OCLC, page 35:
"We were not a big huggie family so I was very, very encased in a little stay-away-from-me shell growing-up, and here I got to open up and feel safe and able to touch and hold and be able to be with another human being, which was really a big relief, a very positive part of my understanding of myself that I wasn't just this outcast evil outsider of everything."
— 2019, Victor C. de Munck, Romantic Love in America, page 152:
"The other factions believe that those who are Factionless are nomads and outcasts. But they are actually a fully functioning community."
— 2015 March 19, Mekado Murphy, “'The Divergent Series: Insurgent' Creates New Worlds”, in The New York Times:
Explore More B2 Vocabulary Words
CEFR Practice Quiz
Because he broke all the rules, the tribe treated him as an ____.
CEFR Practice Quiz (Alternate)
After the scandal, he felt like a social ____, avoided by former friends and colleagues alike.