out of one's element

Idioms  

1. see under in one's element.

---

Example Sentences

You can render the word in a variety of ways, the most usual being “out of one’s element,” a translation I find imperfect, lacking as it does a sense of rootless irresponsibility that goes a long way toward explaining things people get up to in hotels.

From New York Times

It opens up a whole tragedy in the phrase 'out of one's element.'

From Project Gutenberg

He was not an imaginative man nor observant, but the upper regions were his sphere, and he had all the acute sensitiveness incident to being out of one's element.

From Project Gutenberg

Muscular stiffening due to attention to special members is usually the result of an uncomfortable feeling of being out of one's element, and ill at ease in one's surroundings.

From Project Gutenberg

Adj. uncomformable, exceptional; abnormal, abnormous†; anomalous, anomalistic; out of order, out of place, out of keeping, out of tune, out of one's element; irregular, arbitrary; teratogenic; lawless, informal, aberrant, stray, wandering, wanton; peculiar, exclusive, unnatural, eccentric, egregious; out of the beaten track, off the beaten track, out of the common, out of the common run; beyond the pale of, out of the pale of; misplaced; funny. unusual, unaccustomed, uncustomary, unwonted, uncommon; rare, curious, odd, extraordinary, out of the ordinary; strange, monstrous; wonderful &c.

From Project Gutenberg