weirdo
Americannoun
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weirdos
plural
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an odd, eccentric, or unconventional person.
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a psychopath, especially a dangerous or vicious one; psycho.
They caught the weirdo who attacked the children.
noun
Usage
What does weirdo mean? A weirdo is a person who behaves in ways that are considered odd or unconventional. Weirdo is based on the adjective weird, which most commonly means strange, odd, peculiar, or bizarre. Weirdo is very informal. It can be used both negatively as an insult and positively as a compliment, depending on how you feel about someone else’s weird behavior. Much less commonly, weirdo can be used as an informal term for a person considered a dangerous psychopath. Example: My dog keeps licking the wall—what a weirdo!
Other Word Forms
Noun Inflected Forms
Etymology
Origin of weirdo
Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
See Examples For:
The private sector exists somewhere out there—the source of all that money—but its customs are foreign to the weirdo revolutionaries who populate the world Ms. Barker once made her career in.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Jul. 22, 2026
Unburdened by the gravitational pull of parental expectations or affection, the alleged weirdo is free to find her way to happiness by whatever means she sees fit.
From Salon ● May 20, 2026
I was excited to go where nobody thought I was a weirdo.
From The Wall Street Journal ● May 19, 2026
Of course, I’d be the weirdo in the crowd wearing my nerdiest James Cameron shirt, a deep-cut reference to “Aliens.”
From Los Angeles Times ● May 7, 2026
“Why do you think, Mom? I figured the last thing you’d want to do was watch me be your weirdo daughter. Especially in front of a crowd.”
From "The First Rule of Punk" by Celia C. Pérez
"You do get weirdos who are in it for the complete wrong reasons," she said.
From BBC ● Jun. 7, 2026
Arden isn’t afraid to let weirdos be weirdos in a musical that has a healthy suspicion of surface perfection.
From Los Angeles Times ● May 1, 2026
The military swarms in to build a metal wall around the titanic alien, and Blunt’s cozy community of 700 swells to more than 100,000: scientists, journalists, tourists, opportunists and the inevitable grifters, criminals and weirdos.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Jan. 30, 2026
Instead, the plaintiffs sometimes came across as a rogue’s gallery of weirdos, abusers, and fortune seekers.
From Slate ● Sep. 5, 2025
I was too weird, even for the weirdos.
From "Ready Player One: A Novel" by Ernest Cline
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
