outlier

noun

out·li·er | \ ˈau̇t-ˌlī(-ə)r

Definition of outlier

1 : a person whose residence and place of business are at a distance His house was a place of refuge for outliers.

2 : something (such as a geological feature) that is situated away from or classed differently from a main or related body The island is an outlier on the southeast side of the archipelago.

3a : a statistical observation that is markedly different in value from the others of the sample Values that are outliers give disproportionate weight to larger over smaller values.

b : a person or thing that is atypical within a particular group, class, or category She was an outlier when she launched her cruelty-free, sustainably minded brand in 2001, but has found the centre of gravity shifting in her direction. —Jess Cartner-Morley Among the world's wealthy nations, the United States is an outlier on this issue: Americans have the lowest national minimum wage, relative to the median wage, of any of the wealthy nations represented in the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. —Christopher Ingraham

Examples of outlier in a Sentence

Recent Examples on the Web

Four of the five greatest WAR seasons of all time fell between the ages of 26 and 28 (Ruth twice, Carl Yastrzemski and Rogers Hornsby; Ruth, at age 32, is the only top five outlier). — Tom Verducci, SI.com, "The Star That Still Won't Shine: The Incredible, Unprecedented but Unseen Greatness of Mike Trout," 12 July 2018 At first glance, the two outliers, Sadr and Geagea, may appear to be diametrical opposites, but their surprising victories reveal an emerging form of populism sweeping the Middle East. — Renad Mansour, Washington Post, "An emerging populism is sweeping the Middle East," 11 July 2018 In one snake's humble opinion, the song is a transition number, an outlier that perhaps didn't belong on this album. — Rebecca Farley, refinery29.com, "In Washington, D.C., Taylor Swift Finally Performed "So It Goes"," 11 July 2018 The next two will be the Pacers and Raptors or perhaps an outlier. — J. Michael, Indianapolis Star, "Insider: LeBron James' departure to the West opens up field for Pacers, Victor Oladipo," 2 July 2018 But suddenly, an outlier has emerged—a celebrity couple that indulges in our obsession with oversharing. — Elise Taylor, Vogue, "What’s Going on With Ariana Grande and Pete Davidson? Check Instagram," 15 June 2018 Finally, poisoning can be made less effective by removing outliers, data points that are very different from the rest of the training data. — Daniel Lowd, Scientific American, "Can Facebook Use AI to Fight Online Abuse?," 13 June 2018 These outliers tend to be politicians who are either retiring or, in the case of John McCain, facing their imminent death. — Jeet Heer, The New Republic, "Trump is Trump but the GOP is the real threat to American global leadership.," 10 June 2018 The Marlins' tradition is thin, those 1997 and 2003 World Series title outliers, aberrations. — Greg Cote, miamiherald, "Marlins' 25th Anniversary Weekend underlines Derek Jeter's obligation to heal deep wounds," 9 June 2018

These example sentences are selected automatically from various online news sources to reflect current usage of the word 'outlier.' Views expressed in the examples do not represent the opinion of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback.