outcast

• (Received Pronunciation) IPA^(key): /ˈaʊtkɑːst/ (noun, adjective); /aʊtˈkɑːst/ (verb)
• (General American) IPA^(key): /ˈaʊtkæst/ (noun, adjective); /aʊtˈkæst/ (verb)

• Audio (Southern England):

  (file)

• Rhymes: -aʊtkɑːst, -ɑːst, -aʊtkæst, -æst
• Homophone: outcaste

From Middle English outcasten, equivalent to out- +‎ cast.

outcast (third-person singular simple present outcasts, present participle outcasting, simple past and past participle outcast)

1. To cast out; to banish. [from 14th c.]
   • 1590, Edmund Spenser, “Book III, Canto I”, in The Faerie Queene. […], London: […] [John Wolfe] for William Ponsonbie, →OCLC, stanza 16, page 395:

     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: […]

   • 1889, Rudyard Kipling, “The Hill of Illusion”, in Under the Deodars, Boston: The Greenock Press, published 1899, page 84:

     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.

outcast (comparative more outcast, superlative most outcast)

1. That has been cast out; banished, ostracized. [from 14th c.]
   • 1851, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, The Golden Legend, Boston, Mass.: Ticknor, Reed, and Fields, →OCLC, page 35:

     O, horrible fate! Outcast, rejected, / As one with pestilence infected!

   • 2019, Victor C. de Munck, Romantic Love in America, page 152:

     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.

From Middle English outcaste, outecaste, equivalent to out- +‎ cast.

outcast (plural outcasts)

1. One that has been excluded from a society or system, a pariah, a leper. [from 14th c.]
   • 2015 March 19, Mekado Murphy, “'The Divergent Series: Insurgent' Creates New Worlds”, in The New York Times‎^[1]:

     The other factions believe that those who are Factionless are nomads and outcasts. But they are actually a fully functioning community.

2. (more generally) Synonym of outsider: someone who does not belong, a misfit.
   • 2019, Amanda Koci, Henry Walter, Charlie Puth, Maria Smith, Victor Thellm Gigi Grombacher, Roland Spreckle, “So Am I”, performed by Ava Max:

     Do you ever feel like an outcast?
     You don't have to fit into the format
     Oh, but it's okay to be different
     'Cause baby, so am I

3. (Scotland) A quarrel.
4. The amount of increase in the bulk of grain during malting.

• See Thesaurus:outcast

• acts out, cast out, outacts