Definition
Peculiar refers to something or someone that is strange, unusual, or distinct in a way that is not easily explained or understood.
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Excerpts from News Articles
Rather, La Motta’s character isn’t diagnosed or traced to specific personal experiences or explained by aspects of backstory. The peculiarity of the film “Raging Bull”—and its enduring inspiration—is its transformation of La Motta into an opaque and external unit, a negative mirror that makes him a perfect and closed embodiment of the milieu to which he belongs.
When we took the bark sample back to the family that was hosting us during our field campaigns, the hostess immediately recognised the peculiar smell of this tree, which the locals call cabreúva. Indeed, the resin produced has a very woody scent with tones of cinnamon, clove, honey and pine. Our botanical expert later confirmed that it was a species of cabreúva, Myroxylon peruiferum, a tree well known in traditional medicine for its antibiotic, anti-inflammatory and anti-parasitic properties.
"A tenor has the peculiarity of producing a particular overtone cluster," says Schlömicher-Thier who is Consultant Doctor at the Salzburg Festival. "All singers have that, but the tenor can produce it especially at around 3000 hertz.
Lozano says that when he plays one of his peculiar instruments, the object is taken out of its context and it becomes almost invisible as people instead focus on the sound.
The fact that language mediates reality is one of those human conditions which can feel banal to remark upon. Rachel Aviv argues for its peculiarity and interest in her sparkling debut, Strangers to Ourselves: Unsettled Minds and the Stories That Make Us (Farrar, Straus and Giroux), through stories about the language and literature of mental illness.
They are also “a pretty peculiar people” - or at least enjoy presenting themselves this way. Visit Finland gives the example of telling tall tales with a straight face until they become too much for anyone to believe.
The truth is both simpler and more troubling. Banks are peculiar institutions. They take deposits that can be withdrawn at a moment's notice and invest in loans and bonds that cannot be redeemed with the same speed, at least not without substantial losses. And what a socially valuable mechanism this "maturity transformation" is: it gives entrepreneurs access to long-term loans that are cheaper than the alternatives, because they are funded with demand deposits that pay no interest.
Africans and their descendants were sometimes held to be heathens of a peculiar sort, because they were considered to be both a Biblical people and a cursed one: descendants of Canaan, the son of Ham and grandson of Noah. In the Bible, Ham has an ambiguous encounter with a drunk and naked Noah, and is punished with a generational affliction: “Cursed be Canaan; A servant of servants shall he be unto his brethren.
Much has been made of the necessity of knowing the past in order to understand the present and anticipate the future. But that is to undersell history, or certainly the kind of narrative history that I have tried to write in the Lion House. The art of the historian is to create a temporary effect in which behavior that is pretty peculiar seems normal, and to use this effect to bridge the gap between the present and the past.
In chapter 18 of his manuscript, “The War Within the War,” he did decide to “lump together” an assortment of topics “all quite different and yet all shot through with this one peculiar color problem.” This included a brief examination of the work of Black women during the war, based mostly on Addie Hunton and Kathryn Johnson’s Two Colored Women with the American Expeditionary Forces and a small booklet issued by the Colored Work Committee of the YWCA.43 Not surprisingly, he focused almost exclusively on the discrimination they faced.
Read more: The peculiar history of thornapple, the hallucinogenic weed that ended up in supermarket spinach
At the opening, one speaker, a board member of the gallery, ironically apologised for and downplayed the exhibition theme of colonialism, presumably to show off his hospitality to visitors from former colonial countries. His peculiar statement demonstrates the challenge as well as the necessity to have the discussion in this post-colony.
When the slave territory of Missouri sought statehood in 1818, Congress debated for two years before arriving upon the Missouri Compromise of 1820. This was the first of a series of political deals that resulted from arguments between pro-slavery and antislavery forces over the expansion of the “ peculiar institution,” as it was known, into the West. The end of the Mexican-American War in 1848 and the roughly 500,000 square miles (1.
You ask them questions, attempting to understand. There is something off about their answers, which are either vague or out of character, and sometimes there is a peculiar delay, almost as though they were thinking a little too slowly.
The old sociological distinction between guilt cultures and shame cultures seems a useful frame through which to consider the matter. In the former, societal norms about what constitutes decent behaviour are internalised; in the latter, it’s the knowledge that others will see and judge you that keeps you on the straight and narrow. We currently exist, it seems to me, in a peculiar and unbalanced conjunction of the two.
That Petri riffs on specific works of literature and historical events may limit the book’s appeal for some, as anyone not already familiar with Susan Sontag’s “Notes on ‘Camp,’” for instance, may not immediately enjoy “Notes on Camp by Susan Sontag, aged Fifteen, Camp Winnebago.” But those primed to the peculiarities of the past will surely take great pleasure in the way Petri combines Sontag’s severe style with storytelling more akin to Judy Blume.
It said crews should “take into account the peculiarities of this natural phenomenon when choosing routes for domestic and international flights.”
The show becomes peculiar towards the end when actual bondage equipment appears, to teach us about the fetish for breastmilk. It’s a more salacious subject than boring motherhood, which is treated as something of a side note in a show all about milk.
Tanaka himself is not one to settle for the status quo. Known as the “outsider” by his Japanese colleagues, he is straightforward and loves a debate; a trait that is peculiar in a culture known for its indirect communication. After joining Kirin in 1988 as a trainee, he was sent to Napa Valley to work at Raymond Vineyards winery — then a Kirin acquisition — for a few years. He also found time to study for his Masters degree in oenology at UC Davis and though he wanted to remain in California, he was transferred back to Japan.
Over the weekend, a peculiar image of Pope Francis set the internet alight. Widely circulated on social media, the picture shows the 86-year-old pontiff dressed in a chunky longline white puffer coat, cinched at the waist and seemingly layered with other winter weather streetwear.
Depending on your particular view of the world, his inclusion is either an affront to Christian decency or a jolly salute to our monarch’s peculiarities . The green man is a playfully sinister envoy of the otherworldly. His face, either made entirely of leaves or a fleshy human screaming forth foliage, is carved into hundreds of parish churches. The King will pass under a foliate head when he walks through Westminster Abbey’s quire screen on coronation day.
Behind the snafus are a daunting set of structural problems. They are tied to the peculiar way that EV chargers have evolved, and the fact that wires and batteries are way more complicated than what happens at the gas station.
So what event in early Jupiter history could possibly compare? Only the discovery that helped prove that Earth is not the center of the universe. On January 7, 1610, astronomer Galileo Galilei used a telescope to observe Jupiter and found peculiar fixated stars surrounding the planet. He recorded the movements of these four stars for the next few days, discovering that they moved with Jupiter and changed their location around the planet each night.
German sociologist Wolf Lepenies, in his 1992 book Melancholy and Society, traces the origins of weltschmerz to the peculiar status of the bourgeois class, who were permanently excluded from entry into the world of the prestigious elite. However, the driving force in Germany after both world wars was the sense of suffering and loss from warfare with no tangible or beneficial outcome.
Forget the gender pay gap: more male divas, that’s real equality! And yet, I’m not sure the diva is the right territory for po-faced progressiveness. In fact, I’m a bit concerned that the V&A’s quest to strip the term of its problematic “difficult woman” connotations – and broadening its definition to mean pioneering, visually striking creators uncowed by doubters – might end up flattening some of the diva’s peculiar charms.
One issue that even Adams and Jefferson could not discuss candidly was slavery. Jefferson’s mature position on that forbidden subject represented a further retreat from any leadership role in ending the “ peculiar institution.” In 1819, during the debate in Congress over the Missouri Compromise, he endorsed the expansion of slavery into all the western territories, precisely the opposite of the position he had taken in the 1780s.
Sometimes it’s a matter of unfamiliar words or peculiar grammatical constructions. Former UK prime minister David Cameron famously alternated between signing off with “DC” – clearly, his initials – and “LOL”, in text messages he was sending to the media executive Rebekah Brooks. The two are roughly the same age but one seems to have been much more up on text speak than the other. He thought this meant “lots of love”, Brooks explained in 2012 “until I told him it meant ‘laugh out loud’ and then he didn’t sign them like that any more.”
Inland fish restaurants are peculiar places; the older I get, and the further I travel, the more I question why they exist at all. The best fish is eaten next to the water, in the sunshine, cooked simply, without grandeur and with perhaps a little paddle afterwards. Then there are the likes of the Oyster Club that are nowhere near the sea, very fancy and pricey, and where you’ll be fed but possibly ignored. Not waving, but drowning.
The peculiar characteristics of the military-industrial complex reduce the US foreign policy elite into an endless search for new enemies abroad, which is why the United States violated its promise not to expand NATO and has no empathy for the legitimate security concerns of others, especially Russia, said Spinney.
Sometimes it’s a matter of unfamiliar words or peculiar grammatical constructions. Former United Kingdom prime minister David Cameron famously alternated between signing off with “DC” - clearly, his initials - and “LOL”, in text messages he was sending to the media executive Rebekah Brooks.
At the start line on Monday was a robotic dog named Stompy belonging to the Department of Homeland Security. It was trailed by photographers, capturing the peculiar sight.
(Trust me, my Shakespeares can beat up your Shakespeares.) In the depths of my despair with seasonal depression, these mangled poets consoled and befriended me, and eventually, usually around the third blizzard of March, their eyes began to follow me as I paced my office devising and discarding some very peculiar theories about William Shakespeare.
The issue at hand is whether to raise the federal debt ceiling. This ceiling is a peculiar — and destructive — quirk of the U.S. budget process. Here’s how it works: First, Congress passes legislation that determines federal spending and tax collection. This legislation may lead to a budget deficit. Whether that’s a good idea is beside the point: Congress made its choices, and the Treasury Department must do whatever is necessary to honor duly enacted legislation, which may require borrowing to cover the deficit.
And this is precisely where the spiritual insight resides: our aim, properly understood, isn’t transcendence but a fully invested immanence. In this respect, he offers a peculiarly technical approach to an aspiration that finds expression in mystics from Meister Eckhart to the Zen patriarchs: not to ascend to a state of perfection but to recognise that where you are, already, in this moment, is all the perfection you need.
Crispin Black was a second lieutenant with the Guards on the Sir Galahad that day. His book describes the terror, disbelief and peculiar calmness as cannon fire and tracer came directly towards the men on deck. Bombs dropped and the intense heat set off explosions while men struggled and helped each other to escape the fires.