How dreadful it is!

Tabisora   Tuesday, July 01, 2003, 00:12 GMT
The dreadful stuff is that I feel I'm not really able to differenciate

bizarre
strange
weird
odd
dreadful

Can some of you explain me, please?

Thanks.
Jim   Tuesday, July 01, 2003, 00:53 GMT
You need a dictionary. Here you are. Here are a few nice ones.

http://www.macquariedictionary.com.au/
http://dictionary.cambridge.org/
http://www.bartleby.com/61/

Better still, you need to read. Read lots of nice books ... or not so nice ones. The best why to distinguish between words of similar meaning is to get a feel for their use. But I'll tell you this much, the odd one out is "dreadful" because none of the others explicitly indicate "bad".

Okay, perhaps I can be more helpful. The word "bizarre" gives me the feeling of strange in some exotic or extreme way. The word "weird" gives me the feeling of strange in some nerdy, unnatural or awkward way. The word "odd" gives me the feeling of strange in some querky, excentric or pecuilar way. Also "odd" can be used, as I've done above, to indicate that something doesn't fit in a list, group, set, etc. Then there are odd numbers: the set [ 2n+1 | n is a integer].
chantal   Tuesday, July 01, 2003, 01:18 GMT
Tabisora
As my good teacher kept telling us : learn them in an example. Here some :

bizarre /bI'za:(r)/
a bizarre coincidence/incident/situation/plot

strange
He wears strange clothes.
She has some very strange ideas.
I find his attitude strange.

weird : not usual or conventional
Weird clothes/hairstyles
I found his letter weird.

odd : unusual, peculiar
She lives with some very odd characters.
What an odd man !
He is wearing odd socks.
At school she always felt the odd one out.

dreadful : bad, unpleasant. a dreadful play/man/meal/weather/country/noise/mistake
He's a dreadful snob.

As Jim said dreadful is the odd one. We can cross it out.
L   Tuesday, July 01, 2003, 02:32 GMT
Odd can also be used like this:

Do you see many kangaroos around here?

-Yeah, there's the odd one about.
Jacob   Tuesday, July 01, 2003, 02:45 GMT
Bizarre, weird, strange, and odd are just about entirely synonomous, with maybe a slight difference in strength (I put them in decreasing order, to my ear). If something is REALLY unusual I'd be more likely to describe it as bizarre; it something is just slightly unusual, I'd be more likely to say "That's odd."

I can't think of any examples using one of these words where you couldn't substitute any of the others (assuming `odd' is not being used in an entirely different sense.)
Tabisora   Tuesday, July 01, 2003, 16:06 GMT
OK.
It seems 'odd' is the most peculiar one.
When you say something in another language you're not sure of, do you say 'it sounds odd to me"?
Jacob   Tuesday, July 01, 2003, 17:06 GMT
>When you say something in another language you're not sure of, do you say 'it sounds odd to me"?

Yes, that's correct.
Boy   Tuesday, July 01, 2003, 17:58 GMT
They are very common words. I want to make a sentence with them. Please correct me If there is any mistake.

- It was a dreadful experience for me to hang out with those strange kids, They wore weird clothes, jumpin' here and there, screaming and throwing odd jokes on me. To be honest myself, I had really have a bizzare time at their hut.
To boy   Tuesday, July 01, 2003, 20:40 GMT
I should admit that you are smart.
Jacob   Tuesday, July 01, 2003, 23:39 GMT
>- It was a dreadful experience for me to hang out with those strange kids, They wore weird clothes,

All good.

>throwing odd jokes on me

doesn't sound right. "Throwing" is not a verb that's usually associated with jokes. Perhaps, "Telling me odd jokes," or "Playing odd tricks on me" ?

>I had really have a bizzare time at their hut.

"I really had a bizarre time." And "hut" is kind of a strange word choice.
L   Wednesday, July 02, 2003, 02:58 GMT
Whats wrong with hut? Maybe they were in a tree hut, or at pizza hut?
Antonio   Thursday, July 03, 2003, 15:58 GMT
´dreadful´ is the only one that may take the meaning of ´terror´.
france sucks   Thursday, July 03, 2003, 16:24 GMT
bizarre
strange
weird
odd
dreadful

all these words describe france
to france sucks   Friday, July 04, 2003, 00:11 GMT
I could think of a nice list to describe you, you small-minded shit, but what's the point?
Jack Doolan   Monday, July 07, 2003, 04:57 GMT
Don't worry about "france sucks", he probably imagines himself to be a patriot and chronically votes Republican (or would if he were old enough and were organised enough to get himself on the voter rolls).

bizarre - extremely unfamiliar - with a hint that it is so unfamiliar as to be unhealthy, or deliberately set up to be unfamiliar.

strange - unfamiliar like a person speaking with a Glasgow accent in Peoria.

weird - technically means a person fated to die soon and who is aware of it. Related to German "werden". Same meaning as "fey".

odd - 1, 3, 5, 7, 9 are "odd" numbers. Cannot be divided by two. There is always one left over. Singular. Something is "odd" when it is unusual but not without easy explanation.

dreadful - full of dread. The Allied bombing raids on Hamburg were dreadful as over 40,000 people were killed in a few days. But they were not bizarre, weird, strange or odd.