pariah

plural pariahs

1. Synonym of outcast: A person despised and excluded by their family, community, or society, especially a member of the untouchable castes in Indian society.

   I’m a pariah, outlawed from Time Lord society.

   1985, Robert Holmes, “The Two Doctors”, in Doctor Who, season 22, episode 4

   3 more examples

   What is this smoking that it should be considered a crime? I believe in my heart that women are jealous of it, as of a rival. They speak of it as of some secret, awful vice that seizes upon a man, and makes him a Pariah from genteel society.

   1857, W[illiam] M[akepeace] Thackeray, “The Fitz-Boodle Papers”, in Miscellanies: Prose and Verse, volume IV, London: Bradbury and Evans, […], →OCLC, page 4

   […] I went from being a much-feted author to a pariah, since one of the many problems of being trashed on the front page of the New York Times is that everyone is in the know.

   2014, Sylvia Ann Hewlett, “Prologue”, in Executive Presence, →ISBN

   Just four years ago the Saudi Crown Prince, widely known by his initials MBS, was a pariah on the world stage after officials in his entourage dismembered the US-based journalist Jamal Khashoggi in the Saudi consulate in Istanbul, according to a US intelligence assessment.

   2022 December 7, Peter Bergen, “Opinion: How MBS went from pariah to ‘comeback prince’”, in CNN, archived from the original on 26 Mar 2023

   Synonyms: outcast

2. figurativelyA similarly despised group of people or species of animal.

   This scenario could lead to war crimes the scale of which has not been seen in Europe since the Nazis — crimes that would make Vladimir Putin, his cronies and Russia as a country all global pariahs.

   2022 March 2, Thomas L. Friedman, “I See Three Scenarios for How This War Ends”, in The New York Times, →ISSN, archived from the original on 26 Mar 2022

   1 more example

   As ecological conditions became unfavorable for pig raising, there was no alternative function which could redeem its existence. The creature became not only useless, but worse than useless—harmful, a curse to touch or merely to see—a pariah animal.

   2013, Marvin Harris, “The Abominable Pig”, in Food and Culture: A Reader, 3rd edition, New York City, →ISBN, pages 64–65

3. abbreviationellipsisbiologyEllipsis of pariah dog (“an Indian breed, any stray dog in Indian contexts”).