bizarro
bizarro Lexical Profile
bizarro Game Scores & Validity
• adjective
North American Extremely strange, eccentric, or grotesque; bizarre.
"The director's latest film takes the audience on a bizarro journey through a surreal dreamscape."
North American Strikingly inverted, reversed, or opposite to what is expected or normal, as if belonging to a parallel universe.
"Watching the rival politicians suddenly agree on every policy felt like stepping into a bizarro version of Congress."
• noun
North American An eccentric, weird, or unconventional person, or a distorted counterpart of someone or something.
"The villain in the story acts as a twisted bizarro of the hero, mirroring his abilities but lacking his morality."
A contemporary underground literary genre that blends elements of absurdism, satire, surrealism, and speculative fiction.
"Several independent presses specialize in bizarro, publishing cult novels that defy traditional genre boundaries."
Word Nuance & Usage
Note that in Spanish and Portuguese, 'bizarro' is a false friend meaning 'brave', 'gallant', or 'generous', whereas in English it is an informal term meaning 'bizarre' or 'inverted'.
• Rhymes for bizarro
• Nearby Words
Word Origin & Etymology
Coined in late 1950s American comic books as the name of Bizarro, an imperfect, inverted clone of Superman, formed by adding the informal suffix -o to the word bizarre.