noun

• 1A person whose behaviour or attitude sets them apart from others in an uncomfortably conspicuous way.

  ‘a motley collection of social misfits’

  More example sentences

  • ‘It's been a long time since such a collection of punks, misfits and miscreants gathered together to worship such an influential act.’
  • ‘They were a collection of misfits and screwballs who became the terrors of the South Pacific.’
  • ‘There were young children who remained inside until their 40s and 50s with no specific diagnoses, incarcerated for being social misfits.’
  • ‘They're all pretty good kids, but misfits in the outside world.’
  • ‘Similar is the rogue's gallery of misfits the hero is surrounded by.’
  • ‘Some find solidarity and comfort in the company of their peers, others are judged as outsiders and misfits and suffer accordingly.’
  • ‘Early gay culture was like a refuge for all sorts of misfits and nonconformists.’
  • ‘Chaos greets a group of misfits and eccentrics as they return for a new term at a private girls' school.’
  • ‘One of the topsy-turvy things about Australia is the way people rush to identify themselves as an underdog or a battler, the way in which being an outsider, a misfit, is the conservative, establishment position.’
  • ‘I believe it was to paint himself as a passionate misfit, a permanent outsider and underdog.’
  • ‘Rita is an outsider, a teenage misfit who sticks out all the more next to the monotony of the lives around her.’
  • ‘This was set in a cheap boarding house inhabited by a collection of semi-human misfits, degenerates, and murderers, who were what they were because poverty had made them so.’
  • ‘But when a run-down circus arrives in town to give its last performance, Joe discovers kindred spirits in its collection of dreamers and misfits.’
  • ‘It was tempting to dismiss the demonstrators as a ragtag collection of belligerent misfits - and some of them were.’
  • ‘However, living in such close proximity to what has turned out to be a motley collection of misfits and malcontents has me rattled.’
  • ‘He works with a crew of other controllers who are your typical sitcom collection of misfits.’
  • ‘He also spoke extensively on the subject of social misfits being sent to Irish prisons.’
  • ‘Not even I, the social misfit that I am, could resist his perfection.’
  • ‘Lonely teenage misfits with unconventional looks would have their personality revealed to everyone, leading to true love.’
  • ‘The man upstairs's painted as a lonely misfit who's as perplexed by his role as everyone else.’

  Synonyms

  fish out of water, square peg in a round hole, round peg in a square hole

  View synonyms

  1. 1.1 archaic Something that does not fit or that fits badly.