Meaning of idiosyncrasy | Babel Free

Definitions

1. A behavior or way of thinking that is characteristic of a person or a group.
2. Idiosyncrasy, character.
3. A peculiar individual reaction to a generally innocuous substance or factor; a risk factor.
4. A peculiarity that serves to distinguish or identify.

Equivalents

Examples

“This mode of death had been an idiosyncrasy with his family, for generations past; not often occurring, indeed, but, when it does occur, usually attacking individuals about the Judge’s time of life, and generally in the tension of some mental crisis, or, perhaps, in an access of wrath.”

“Every village has its idiosyncrasy, its constitution, often its own code of morality.”

“If he expresses himself such as he is, an idiosyncrasy affected but not annihilated by education, he may say that his books are his own.”

“She's flying in from Stockholm on Thursday. She apparently has certain sexual idiosyncrasies.”

“The trouble with this question is that it removes the focus from the substance of whatever event or debate is being discussed, redirecting it to the speaker’s or writer’s personal perceptions or expectations about it — away from facts and toward idiosyncrasy.”

“[…]I have no antipathy, or rather Idio-ſyncraſie, in dyet, humour, ayre, any thing; […].”

“There are, however, distinct differences between diatheses and idiosyncrasies; diatheses definitely tend to the development of disease, for example the scrofulous diathesis of our forebears favours the onset of tuberculosis; idiosyncrasies are abnormal reactions but do not necessarily dispose to disease.”

“He mastered the idiosyncrasies of English spelling and speech.”

CEFR level