outlier

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 But Bloody Sunday wasn’t an outlier; brutalization of Black bodies on U.S. soil had been taking place since our first ancestors arrived in 1619. — Jameelah Nasheed, Teen Vogue, "It Shouldn't Take Violence for White Americans to Push for Black Civil Rights," 7 Mar. 2020 There were some outliers to that, said Lyons, an associate professor of management at Elon University in North Carolina. — Dana Hunsinger Benbow, Indianapolis Star, "Inside the quirky IQ test at the NFL Combine: Manning scored lower than Luck; Colin Kaepernick beat them both," 27 Feb. 2020 The Bucks had made just 4 of 19 three-pointers in the first half and only shot 30.6% from deep for the game, but Matthews was the outlier, scoring 17 points while going 4 of 5 on three-pointers after halftime and 5 of 9 for the game. — Matt Velazquez, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, "Bucks 120, Pelicans 108: The first Giannis-Zion clash goes in the veteran's favor," 4 Feb. 2020 Lil Nas X is the outlier, a rapper and male solo artist. — Raisa Bruner, Time, "Here's Why Artists Who Aren't That New Keep Getting Nominated for the Best New Artist Grammy," 23 Jan. 2020 Rwanda is an outlier, with more women in power, proportionally, than any other country (followed by two other authoritarian-leaning nations, Cuba and Bolivia). — Kennedy Elliott, National Geographic, "Rwanda's legislature is majority female. Here’s how it happened.," 15 Oct. 2019 But this notion turns out to be incorrect: After limiting the distorting effect of the outliers, the share of income people give away is essentially flat across income levels. — Benjamin A. Priday, The Conversation, "Rich folks aren’t that stingy after all," 7 May 2020 The story could be a bizarre outlier—or a tantalizing clue. — Gretchen Vogel, Science | AAAS, "Should schools reopen? Kids’ role in pandemic still a mystery," 4 May 2020 In the early stages of the pandemic, Indonesia was a regional outlier, not reporting any Covid-19 cases until early March. — Masrur Jamaluddin, Sandi Sidhu And Helen Regan, CNN, "The world's most-populous Muslim nation just banned holiday travel over Ramadan," 24 Apr. 2020

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.