bizarre

comparative more bizarre · comparative bizarrer · superlative most bizarre · superlative bizarrest

1. Strangely unconventional; highly unusual and different from common experience, often in an extravagant, fantastic, and/or conspicuous way.

   That was a bizarre adventure!

   5 more examples

   […]no, the abjectly unheroic nature of the death,—that was the sting,—that and the bizarre wording of the resulting obituary: “Shot with a rock, on a raft.”

   1880, Mark Twain [pseudonym] (Samuel L[anghorne] Clemens), chapter XVII, in A Tramp Abroad; […], Hartford, Conn.: American Publishing Company; London: Chatto & Windus, →OCLC, pages 154–155

   Strange as it all was, bizarre as it may hereafter seem even to us who felt its potent influence at the time, it comforted us much; and the silence, which showed Mrs. Harker’s coming relapse from her freedom of soul, did not seem so full of despair to any of us as we had dreaded.

   1897, Bram Stoker, Dracula, Westminster [London]: Archibald Constable and Company, […], →OCLC

   […] she had brass leggings to the knee, brass wire gauntlets to the elbow, a crimson spot on her tawny cheek, innumerable necklaces of glass beads on her neck; bizarre things, charms, gifts of witch-men, that hung about her, glittered and trembled at every step.

   1899 (please specify the page), Joseph Conrad, “The Heart of Darkness”, in Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine, volume CLXV, New York, N.Y.: The Leonard Scott Publishing Company, […], →OCLC, part

   I confess that I had not up to now taken a very serious view of the case, which had seemed to me rather grotesque and bizarre than dangerous.

   1903 December 26, A[rthur] Conan Doyle, “The Adventure of the Solitary Cyclist”, in The Return of Sherlock Holmes, New York, N.Y.: McClure, Phillips & Co., published February 1905, →OCLC

   That's what we are / We all want a love bizarre

   1985, “A Love Bizarre”, in Romance 1600, performed by Sheila E. ft. Prince

plural bizarres

1. Any of several types of flower with stripes of various colours.
   1. agricultureA carnation having stripes of two distinct colours on the white petals.
   2. agricultureA tulip with a certain pattern of various colored stripes.

      1 more example

      Another singular feature in the tulip is, that after it breaks, it ever remains the same, and never returns to its self-color again. The show or fancy tulips are divided into three classes:— 1. Bybloemen, or violets, such as have a white ground, variegated with purple or violet, the edges well feathered, the leaflets erect, and the whole forming a perfect cup. 2. Bizarres, having a yellow ground, variegated with rose, scarlet, purple, or violet. 3. Roses, with white ground color, variegated with rosy-red, pink, or soft rose.

      1889 January 1, Polman Mooy, “The Tulip, Its Origin and History”, in City Document No. 76: Annual Report of the Superintendent of Common and Public Grounds (Documents of the City of Boston, for the Year 1889), volume II, Rockwell and Churchill (city printers), published 1890, page 38