Skip to content
Allin

abnormal

adjectivenounattested in dialogue

  • United Kingdom//ˌæbˈnɔː.məl//
  • United States//ˌæbˈnɔɹ.ml̩//
  • United States//əbˈnɔɹ.ml̩//

Not conforming to rule or system; deviating from the usual or normal type.

adjective

  1. 1

    Not conforming to rule or system; deviating from the usual or normal type.

    And then after an abnormal meal, which was either a very late breakfast or a very early lunch, they drove on to Victoria Station.

    Here perhaps one of you might interrupt me and say, 'But what is it that you do, Socrates? How is it that you have been misrepresented like this? Surely all this talk and gossip about you would never have arisen if you had confined yourself to ordinary activities, but only if your behaviour was abnormal. Give us the explanation, if you do not want us to draw our own conclusions.'

  2. 2

    Of or pertaining to that which is irregular, in particular, behaviour that deviates from norms of social propriety or accepted standards of mental health.

    Furuseth was right; I was abnormal, an "emotionless monster," a strange bookish creature, capable of pleasuring in sensations only of the mind.

    Many of the so-called rites of these secret societies were so patently ridiculous, that it is quite obvious that they were merely an excuse for men and women to indulge in sex-play and lustful gratification, frequently of an abnormal kind.

Etymology

Etymology tree Proto-Indo-European *h₂ep Proto-Indo-European *-o Proto-Indo-European *h₂epó Proto-Italic *ap Latin abder. Latin ab-bor. English ab- Proto-Indo-European *ǵneh₃- Proto-Indo-European *-sḱéti Proto-Indo-European *ǵn̥h₃sḱétider. Proto-Hellenic *gignṓskō Ancient Greek γιγνώσκω (gignṓskō) Proto-Indo-European *-mṓ Ancient Greek -μων (-mōn) Ancient Greek γνώμων (gnṓmōn)bor. Etruscanbor.? Latin norma Proto-Indo-European *h₂el- Proto-Indo-European *-is Proto-Indo-European *h₂élisder.? Proto-Italic *-ālis Latin -ālis Latin nōrmālisder. English normal English abnormal From ab- + normal. First attested in 1835, replacing the earlier anormal and even earlier abnormous, from Latin abnormis (“departing from normal”), from either ab- (“away from”) + norma (“rule, norm”), or Ancient Greek ἀνώμαλος (anṓmalos).

noun

  1. 1

    A person or object that is not normal.

Forms

plural
abnormals
comparative
more abnormal
superlative
most abnormal
The neighbouring pagesAlphabetical order follows the rules of the language, not byte values: an accent decides only between two otherwise identical words, and Spanish files Ñ as a letter of its own.

Lexical content from Wiktionary, under CC BY-SA 4.0 · Source entry · Data version 2026-08-23

Rank among the words of the OpenSubtitles 2018 corpus — film and television subtitles, so spoken rather than written usage (CC BY-SA 3.0).