See out of character on Wiktionary
{
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"text": "The burst of anger was out of character for the normally placid boy.",
"type": "example"
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"ref": "2012 April 29, Nathan Rabin, “TV: Review: THE SIMPSONS (CLASSIC): “Treehouse of Horror III” (season 4, episode 5; originally aired 10/29/1992)”, in (Please provide the book title or journal name):",
"text": "In “Treehouse Of Horror” episodes, the rules aren’t just different—they don’t even exist. If writers want Homer to kill Flanders or for a segment to end with a marriage between a woman and a giant ape, they can do so without worrying about continuity or consistency or fans griping that the gang is behaving out of character.",
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{
"ref": "2018 October 17, Drachinifel, 33:41 from the start, in Last Ride of the High Seas Fleet - Battle of Texel 1918, archived from the original on 2022-08-04:",
"text": "Now, that, admittedly, did do an awful lot more damage (the 5th and 6th were almost completely wiped out), but the High Seas Fleet was, in turn, almost completely wiped out (in fact, basically was wiped out, to a man) by the oncoming rest of the British Grand Fleet, and it was decided by everybody that this kind of, like, suicidal, completely suicidal, charge was probably a bit out of character for Hipper, and so we didn't take that particular one into account.",
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"Inconsistent with someone's personality, disposition, or usual expected behaviour."
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"(idiomatic) Inconsistent with someone's personality, disposition, or usual expected behaviour."
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{
"_dis1": "89 5 6",
"code": "az",
"lang": "Azerbaijani",
"sense": "inconsistent with someone's personality, disposition, or usual expected behaviour",
"word": "xas olmayan"
},
{
"_dis1": "89 5 6",
"code": "fi",
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"sense": "inconsistent with someone's personality, disposition, or usual expected behaviour",
"word": "ei luonteenomainen"
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{
"_dis1": "89 5 6",
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"sense": "inconsistent with someone's personality, disposition, or usual expected behaviour",
"word": "inhabituel de la part de quelqu’un"
},
{
"_dis1": "89 5 6",
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"sense": "inconsistent with someone's personality, disposition, or usual expected behaviour",
"word": "qui ne correspond pas à quelqu’un"
},
{
"_dis1": "89 5 6",
"code": "mi",
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"sense": "inconsistent with someone's personality, disposition, or usual expected behaviour",
"word": "haraki"
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{
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"lang": "Polish",
"sense": "inconsistent with someone's personality, disposition, or usual expected behaviour",
"word": "nietypowy"
},
{
"_dis1": "89 5 6",
"code": "ru",
"lang": "Russian",
"roman": "nesvójstvenno",
"sense": "inconsistent with someone's personality, disposition, or usual expected behaviour",
"word": "несво́йственно"
}
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"text": "I was out of character for most of the first act because those people in the third row wouldn't stop chatting.",
"type": "example"
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"Not in character; not in the zone; not successfully performing within the mindset of a given character in a theatrical performance."
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"(idiomatic, acting) Not in character; not in the zone; not successfully performing within the mindset of a given character in a theatrical performance."
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"_dis1": "0 56 44",
"word": "break character"
},
{
"_dis1": "0 56 44",
"word": "drop character"
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"_dis1": "0 56 44",
"word": "uncharacteristic"
}
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"text": "After watching him perform so energetically, it is a bit of a trip to hang out with him when he's out of character. In real life, he's really mellow.",
"type": "example"
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{
"text": "Susan asked the GM, out of character, whether she was able to sense magic in the room.",
"type": "example"
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{
"text": "The comedian stepped out of character to mug directly to the audience.",
"type": "example"
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"Not acting; not \"on\"; behaving within one's natural personality rather than that of a character, or taking actions entirely outside the fictional context."
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"(idiomatic, acting, roleplaying games) Not acting; not \"on\"; behaving within one's natural personality rather than that of a character, or taking actions entirely outside the fictional context."
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"wikipedia": [
"Breaking character"
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"word": "out of character"
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"ref": "2012 April 29, Nathan Rabin, “TV: Review: THE SIMPSONS (CLASSIC): “Treehouse of Horror III” (season 4, episode 5; originally aired 10/29/1992)”, in (Please provide the book title or journal name):",
"text": "In “Treehouse Of Horror” episodes, the rules aren’t just different—they don’t even exist. If writers want Homer to kill Flanders or for a segment to end with a marriage between a woman and a giant ape, they can do so without worrying about continuity or consistency or fans griping that the gang is behaving out of character.",
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"(idiomatic, acting) Not in character; not in the zone; not successfully performing within the mindset of a given character in a theatrical performance."
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"type": "example"
},
{
"text": "Susan asked the GM, out of character, whether she was able to sense magic in the room.",
"type": "example"
},
{
"text": "The comedian stepped out of character to mug directly to the audience.",
"type": "example"
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],
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"Not acting; not \"on\"; behaving within one's natural personality rather than that of a character, or taking actions entirely outside the fictional context."
],
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"(idiomatic, acting, roleplaying games) Not acting; not \"on\"; behaving within one's natural personality rather than that of a character, or taking actions entirely outside the fictional context."
],
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"ogg_url": "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/d3/En-au-out_of_character.ogg"
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"translations": [
{
"code": "az",
"lang": "Azerbaijani",
"sense": "inconsistent with someone's personality, disposition, or usual expected behaviour",
"word": "xas olmayan"
},
{
"code": "fi",
"lang": "Finnish",
"sense": "inconsistent with someone's personality, disposition, or usual expected behaviour",
"word": "ei luonteenomainen"
},
{
"code": "fr",
"lang": "French",
"sense": "inconsistent with someone's personality, disposition, or usual expected behaviour",
"word": "inhabituel de la part de quelqu’un"
},
{
"code": "fr",
"lang": "French",
"sense": "inconsistent with someone's personality, disposition, or usual expected behaviour",
"word": "qui ne correspond pas à quelqu’un"
},
{
"code": "mi",
"lang": "Maori",
"sense": "inconsistent with someone's personality, disposition, or usual expected behaviour",
"word": "haraki"
},
{
"code": "pl",
"lang": "Polish",
"sense": "inconsistent with someone's personality, disposition, or usual expected behaviour",
"word": "nietypowy"
},
{
"code": "ru",
"lang": "Russian",
"roman": "nesvójstvenno",
"sense": "inconsistent with someone's personality, disposition, or usual expected behaviour",
"word": "несво́йственно"
}
],
"wikipedia": [
"Breaking character"
],
"word": "out of character"
}
Download raw JSONL data for out of character meaning in All languages combined (6.1kB)
This page is a part of the kaikki.org machine-readable All languages combined dictionary. This dictionary is based on structured data extracted on 2025-01-25 from the enwiktionary dump dated 2025-01-20 using wiktextract (c15a5ce and 5c11237). The data shown on this site has been post-processed and various details (e.g., extra categories) removed, some information disambiguated, and additional data merged from other sources. See the raw data download page for the unprocessed wiktextract data.
If you use this data in academic research, please cite Tatu Ylonen: Wiktextract: Wiktionary as Machine-Readable Structured Data, Proceedings of the 13th Conference on Language Resources and Evaluation (LREC), pp. 1317-1325, Marseille, 20-25 June 2022. Linking to the relevant page(s) under https://kaikki.org would also be greatly appreciated.