outlandish

The story

1. Proto-Indo-European · inherited from*lendʰ-“heath; land”
2. Proto-Indo-European · inherited from*úd“away; out, outward; upwards”
3. Proto-Germanic · inherited from*ūtlandiskaz
4. Proto-West Germanic · inherited from*ūtlandisk
5. Old English · inherited fromūtlendisċ“foreign; strange, outlandish”
6. Middle English · inherited fromoutlandisch
7. English todayoutlandish

The adjective is derived from Middle English outlandisch, outlondish (“foreign”), from Old English ūtlendisċ (“foreign; strange, outlandish”), from Proto-West Germanic *ūtlandisk, from Proto-Germanic *ūtlandiskaz, from *ūtlandą (“(adjective) alien, foreign; relating to outlying land; (noun) foreign land; outlying land”) + *-iskaz (suffix forming adjectives from nouns with the sense ‘characteristic of; pertaining to’). *Ūtlandą is derived from *ūt- (suffix meaning ‘beyond; external to, on the outside of’) (from Proto-Indo-European *úd (“away; out, outward; upwards”)) + *landą (“area of ground, land”) (from Proto-Indo-European *lendʰ- (“heath; land”)). By surface analysis, outland + -ish. The noun is derived from the adjective. Cognates * Danish udenlandsk (“foreign, non-domestic”) * Dutch uitlands (dated) (now buitenlands (“foreign, non-domestic”)), Dutch uitlandig (“absent from the home country”) (now chiefly Suriname) * Faroese útlendskur (“foreign, non-domestic”) * German ausländisch (“foreign, non-domestic”) * Icelandic útlenskur (“foreign”) * Swedish utländsk (“foreign, non-domestic”)

Words from the same roots

First known use, by meaning

• from late 16th c. Greatly different from common experience; bizarre, outrageous, strange.