pariah

pa·ri·ah

noun \pə-ˈrī-ə\

Definition of PARIAH

1

: a member of a low caste of southern India

2

: one that is despised or rejected : outcast

Examples of PARIAH

1. He's a talented player but his angry outbursts have made him a pariah in the sport of baseball.
2. <I felt like a pariah when I wore the wrong outfit to the dinner party.>
3. For decades, African states longed for the day when South Africa would be liberated from its status as the apartheid pariah and become the economic engine that would pull Africa out of its mire of poverty and underdevelopment, much as Japan did for the Pacific Rim. —Allister Sparks, Wilson Quarterly, Spring 2001
4. Even as her star was rising in the outside world, she was becoming more and more a pariah in her own village, where her isolation and sense of rejection made her, for a time, a prisoner in her house, a victim of agoraphobia. —Judy Oppenheimer, New York Times Book Review, 3 July 1988
5. Once they began to migrate to the United States, especially after this country conferred citizenship on them in 1917, they discovered what it meant to be a pariah in the country that had adopted them. —John Hope Franklin, “The Land of Room Enough,” 1981, in Race and History, 1989

Origin of PARIAH

Tamil paṟaiyan, literally, drummer

First Known Use: 1613

Related to PARIAH

Synonyms: castaway, castoff, leper, offscouring, outcast, reject

Related Words: untouchable; outsider; deportee, exile

Near Antonyms: insider

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Rhymes with PARIAH

Aglaia, messiah, papaya, Thalia