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Use eccentric in a sentence

Definition of eccentric:

  • (noun) a person with an unusual or odd personality
  • (noun) a person of a specified kind
  • (adjective) not having a common center; not concentric; "eccentric circles"
  • (adjective) conspicuously or grossly unconventional or unusual

Sentence Examples:

There had always been something odd and strange in her behavior to him; but he had ascribed this to her eccentric manner.

If we are to keep it from thus degenerating we need to grasp above all the difference between the eccentric and the concentric imagination.

Your father has always been an excitable, eccentric man, and this trouble of my father's death has been too much for him.

She was the greatest heiress in France, and an exceedingly vain and eccentric person, aged twenty-three at the beginning of the Fronde.

In this way only is society preserved from becoming a mob of eccentrics and fanatics, each whirling in his own little circle.

Secondly, he had strange, honest, eccentric twists of thinking, that could coalesce with the thoughts of no party in the long run.

The eccentric exploits and the violent passions, by which his race had been ever characterized, were to him a source of secret exultation.

Caroline is chagrined to see the audience entirely taken up with women who are not with their husbands, with eccentric women, in short.

He begins, and then immediately, with evident intent to amuse, he rattles off an indescribable, eccentric medley until your ears are tired listening.

One eccentric character, a Scotchman, who determined to stick to his domicile, took refuge on his parlor table as the water was rising.

"I copy this letter," he writes in his memoirs, "in order to give an idea of this woman's eccentric and obstinately evilly-inclined character."

He himself must seem to her eccentric, undignified, a flamboyant sort of creature whom she pitied and whose errors she wished to remedy.

I was aroused from the momentary shock caused by the revelation of this eccentric apartment by an unknown nauseous flavor in my mouth.

People lingered in the doorway, on the stairs, and leaned over the balustrade for one more story from the genial and eccentric man.

From the very first he has been eccentric, timid, and hypersensitive, and is to-day as tender-hearted and affectionate to his people as ever.

He considered her behavior eccentric; but she carried out her eccentricity with a self-assurance which once more showed her in a new light.

They were sprightly and vivacious, touched with humor, often eccentric, sometimes inclining to egotism, but always intensely earnest and decidedly vigorous.

If both men were what some would call eccentric, to each other they seemed only companionable, which, after all, is the main thing.

The center is all done without stopping; the outside rim by altering the eccentric chuck four times, to make each successive wave flatter.

Now, in each revolution of the engine, the cut-off eccentric in effect revolves in the same direction about the center of the main eccentric.

It seems that eccentric peers and struggling journalists are apt to provide the same air of sartorial abandon to the eye of the uninitiated.

Vegetables and flowers, which grew side by side in an eccentric jumble, had been flattened out by the rain into a wallow of mud.

If they are fearfully eccentric, all the neighborhood will be talking about it in a week, and thinking it funny we have such relations.

The capabilities of the planets for producing disturbance are greatly increased when the disturbed body follows the eccentric path of a comet.

Murray was an old bachelor, very rich, and some people said very eccentric, though, in truth, his eccentricity was only indiscriminate generosity.

Eccentric as the English are, there are limits to their eccentricity, and no one leaves home and friends and country without some good reason.

The early books excited the wrath of his contemporaries, when they were not ridiculed as the grotesque outpourings of an eccentric humorist.

Far, far finer in effect than New York's over eccentric alley of painters, Washington Mews, its original loveliness has simply been restored.

The orbit is very eccentric, the eccentricity being about one-third, or greater than that of any other satellite of the solar system.

I tell you, Ronnie, I saw lots of pictures in New York that were eccentric, but they were striving to rediscover life in painting.

Their orbits are very small ellipses, only a few seconds in the longest direction, and more eccentric than those of the planets.

A writer whom we have studied, mused over, sympathized with, can surprise us only by doing something eccentric, affected, unworthy of himself.

The actions of this eccentric saint and the anecdotes told about him made, as already hinted, a particular impression on the uneducated.

With regard to the means of producing the necessary rapidity of movement, the above-described eccentric or crank disc can hardly be surpassed.

The further ornamentation of the cords, depending on the eccentric chuck or eccentric cutters, will not be described in the present paper.

The outstretched hand of the Northern Congressman was not refused by the vagrant, whose eccentric sorrow yet amused the Southern Committeemen.

It needs only to be mentioned that this type, as well as those with eccentric forefinger perforations are used with the naked hand.

Down they went, round and round, threading their way along an amazing labyrinth of valves, levers, gauges, eccentrics, tubes, and steam-pipes.

Perhaps by some eccentric recluse, who had chosen the site, for the purpose of contemplating civilization, without being disturbed by it?

Yet, vulgar as was his costume, he did not himself seem vulgar, but rather eccentric, lawless, something out of the pale of convention.

Her welfare should not depend upon the hallucinations and eccentric ideas of a man half out of his senses with love and grief.

Never intentionally eccentric, he had previously perhaps exaggerated the traits which were peculiar to a stage in the development of his own personality.

He was an eccentric old fellow, and always corked his bottles by means of this peculiar device, which he claimed to have invented.

I always help old ladies over crossings, and pick up parcels for old gentlemen, in case they should turn out to be eccentric millionaires.

Like all eccentric women who desire to play the part of man, she made her appearance before Napoleon in the most absurd, tasteless attire.

They thought these strange movements of the planets were accomplished by mounting them on subsidiary eccentric wheels in the revolving crystal sphere.

What can be done if the intermediate side rods were broken on a consolidation engine having the eccentric on the axle ahead of the main wheel?

The measure throughout was admirably kept, and the frequent turns were simultaneously made by both dancers, accompanied by the same eccentric gestures.

His studies are very desultory and eccentric, but he has amassed a lot of out-of-the way knowledge which would astonish his professors.

That eccentric assemblage of bones made one spasmodic step forward, which brought the bloody, hairy carcass with a swing against his loins.

The first common mistake to get rid of is that mankind consists of a great mass of religious people and a few eccentric atheists.

"I can only say that I hope that you will find a more worthy object of what I cannot but call your eccentric liberality."

To apply to a permanently constituted planet the rules promulgated to preserve discipline amid a general breaking-up, is surely an eccentric kind of legislation.

They were not quite that, of course, though some of them were eccentric; and those who were eccentric had the courage of their eccentricity.

Towards this the eccentric maid-servant seemed to be making determined passes, frantically prevented every now and again by the two young girls.

Thomas Simmons, the subject of the present plate, was one of the unfortunates with whom he became acquainted on one of these eccentric excursions.

On another occasion a well-known rather eccentric character, having purchased some peas, shelled them in the omnibus to save time on his return home.

The marvelous phenomena of new, or temporary, stars, which appear as suddenly as conflagrations, and often turn into something else as eccentric as themselves.

No matter how ugly the new thing might be, so long as it was startling; no matter how eccentric, provided it was original.

These two children, by a useful whim of the eccentric old man, had received their portions of the patrimony on their respective wedding-days.

He was a man who would have attracted attention, if only from the somewhat eccentric nature of his dress and his unkempt appearance.

Having no preference, I offered to exchange; but this only astonished my eccentric neighbor, and set him off into a labyrinth of interjections.

The old lady liked to dress in rather showy colors; she was considered eccentric, but was also known to be good and generous.

We trudged on foot sometimes in Corsica, to get into the country, and should have been considered mad; but, as Englishmen, we were only eccentric.

"Then, after all, it may be only the whim of an eccentric woman that leads her thus to persecute an inoffensive, industrious person?"

The villagers had always regarded the turnpike-keeper as rather an eccentric person; but henceforth they began to look upon him as downright crazy.

Twirling his pen, occasional spitting, jerking his foot backward, taken with his dress, gave him a most eccentric appearance in the lecture room.

This was eccentric, for he had endured from those two young Apaches every extremity of unpleasantness for upwards of a couple of years.

For those old-fashioned days were very ceremonious and any want of deference to the eccentric old lady was not to be thought of.

While cams and eccentrics may be relied on to a certain extent, there are numerous places where the motion must be made positive and continued.

He supported himself by singing in the streets, generally psalms, and with eccentric modulations of the voice which always occasioned mirth in hearers.

Murchison read the letter through as though this eccentric but lovable gentleman had written to bully him on behalf of some injured client.

The law of heredity winds like a red thread through the family history of every criminal, of every epileptic, eccentric and insane person.

We may say the same of the chain and eccentric, which can replace with similar advantage the crank and hook in ordinary use.

We may name, in addition, four eccentric, if not crazy, individuals, called founders of sects, who in their strangeness really represented only themselves.

A capital eccentric figure is killed (some good things are squandered in this book) just when we are beginning to find him a genuine novelty.

The Eccentric Strap is that part of the engine in which the eccentric revolves, and is attached to link by the eccentric rod.

There are a vast number of fidgety, nervous, and eccentric people who live only to expect new disappointments or to recount their old ones.

The meaning is, that some species of the genus have no stem, while there are others in which the stem is lateral or eccentric.

He was a man with a small private income, a little eccentric in his ways and obsessed by one idea, the intelligence of animals.

No one can really taste that eccentric book unless he reads it as a whole; its humors arbitrarily separated and cut-and-dried are nearly unintelligible.

She was accustomed to Weevil's eccentric language, his contradictions gave her no suspicions; she swallowed the rambling story whole and wanted more.

He was an eccentric man, but he appeared to have a good deal of strength of character, for he always denounced slavery and advocated its abolition.

It is only as a rule when the authorities are eccentric in their demands that the building owner considers himself harassed by protective measures.

He was a willful, independent, eccentric person, of a lonely and sour disposition, and refused to be bound by the rules of the university.

Mused Tom, for usually when the eccentric man heard the throbbing of Tom's motor, he was out waiting for the young inventor.

I call it extremely eccentric conduct on the part of any man to persist in collecting odd volumes, and to studiously ignore complete sets.

A special starting valve is provided for each end of the cylinder which is operated from the cam shaft by means of an eccentric.

The powers of the eccentric cutter frame will be found sufficiently extensive to make it a most serviceable, perhaps necessary, piece of lathe apparatus.

How often the physician of yore (and really not so long since) had to be regarded as an eccentric virtuoso if he tested urine as routine!

Next, remove steam chest cover and place the eccentrics about one-quarter turn ahead of the crank in the direction the engine is to run.

Patty began to think her strange guest was eccentric rather than impolite, and began to take a fancy to the somewhat brusque visitor.

Observe the combination of simplicity with power; note how a great principle of "law" underlies the apparent intricacy of eccentric and intersecting orbits.

They talked them over together, compared their versions and methods, and stimulated each other to fresh feats of mimicry and eccentric character delineation.

There he became distinguished for his eccentric conduct, his sharpness of wit, and his galling sarcasm, which made him feared by all parties.

They were dashing and eccentric young generals, whose personal reputation attracted all sorts of wild and lawless characters to take service under them.

The story of an ambitious young inventor and a young society girl, who are forced into marriage by the will of an eccentric millionaire uncle.

This eccentric virtuoso is said to have drunk six bottles of champagne every night he performed, and to have improved gradually until about the fifth.

The leaves are bright green, long and fleshy; the flowers are white and usually fragrant, having eccentric forms peculiar to the orchid family.

Even the former patron of my peculiar Leipzig overture thought it impracticable and eccentric, seeing that I had again turned my back on light opera.