English

Noun

pariah ‎(plural pariahs)

1. An outcast.
2. A demographic group, species, or community that is generally despised.
3. Someone in exile.
4. A member of one of the oppressed social castes in India.
5. A person who is rejected (from society or home).

Quotations

• 2014: Sylvia Ann Hewlett, Executive Presence, Prologue

  I didn’t even need to finish the article to understand the damage it would do—which was swift and devastating. In a matter of weeks, Creating a Life was DOA—and, figuratively speaking, so was I. I went from being a much-feted author to a pariah, since one of the many problems of being trashed on the front page of the New York Times is that everyone is in the know.

• 1985 — Robert Holmes, The Two Doctors, p 14

  ‘I’m a pariah, outlawed from Time Lord society.’

• 1842 — William Makepeace Thackeray, The Fitz-Boodle Papers (Fitz-Boodle's Confessions, preface )

  What is this smoking that it should be considered a crime? I believe in my heart that women are jealous of it, as of a rival. They speak of it as of some secret, awful vice that seizes upon a man, and makes him a pariah from genteel society.

Synonyms

• See also Wikisaurus:outcast

Related terms

• pop culture pariah

Translations

Anagrams

• Pahari
• Pirahã