Bizarre - An Odd Word with an Angry History

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BIZARRE

Adjective & noun. Mid-17th century.

[French from Italian bizzarro angry, of unknown origin. Compare Spanish and Portuguese bizarro handsome, brave.]

A1. adjective. Eccentric, fantastic, grotesque. M17

A2. Designating variegated forms of garden flowers, as carnations, tulips, etc. M18

B1 noun. A bizarre carnation, tulips, etc. L18

B2 absolute. The bizarre quality of things; bizarre things. M19

Also: bizarrely adverb L19. bizarreness noun E20. bizarrerie noun bizarre quality M18.

A girlfriend once told me that I use the word bizarre a lot. From this, I concluded that I either really liked the word bizarre (and I do), that my threshold for what I consider bizarre was rather low, or that I needed to expand my active vocabulary to include other similarly queer synonyms (such as curious, fantastic, grotesque, singular, etc). It was probably a combination of all three.

Bizarre is a fittingly curious word. There are only three other biz- words in the Shorter OED, being biz, bizarro (which hardly counts) and bizcacha; the zarr formation is similarly odd. As for its etymology, this too is steeped in mystery. For some time it was thought that it was a word of Basque origin meaning 'beard' (the idea being that some clean-shaven French folk found the look of bearded Basque soldiers odd). Most sources, however, are now settled on the idea that bizarre comes from French through the Italian word bizzarro, meaning 'angry', which is similarly appropriate as many people become inexplicably angry when they encounter the bizarre or unfamiliar. The ultimate origin of bizzarro, however, is a mystery.

Do you like the word bizarre?

Is there anything out there that you find particularly bizarre? Do you get angry when you encounter it?

Do please leave your oddest comments below.