Definition of outsider - What is it, Meaning and Concept

The notion of outsider has its etymological origin in the Catalan word foraster .The concept refers to the one that comes from or comes from another place (that is, from a site different from your own).

For example: “In the town there is uneasiness as I arrive a group of mysterious strangers trying to run away from neighbors...", " Sometimes I feel like I'm an outsider in my own land ", " A chronicler must look at reality of his country with eyes of a stranger ”.

An outsider, therefore, comes from outside .It is an individual who resides or is in an area of ​​which he is not native or in which he does not live stably or a man born in Germany is an outsider in Paraguay , to name a case.The same goes for a woman irani found in South Africa .

The term is often used in small towns where a person outsider draws attention or, at least , is quickly detected by the neighbors.In a large city, with massive movements of subjects, migrations and tourist activity, it is difficult to discover who is an outsider.Many of the citizens, in fact, may have been born elsewhere and have settled in the locality makes a certain amount of time.

This term is not commonly used in everyday speech, although it is very likely that most people know it and understand its meaning without problem.If we look for it in a synonym dictionary, we find a moderate list of words, some more normal than others, but all with the same connotation: strange, foreign, unknown, exotic, alien and foreign .Without a doubt, the latter is the most used in popular language, since it clearly reflects the two meanings mentioned in the previous paragraphs: "coming from outside" and "person living in a place where he was not born."

Other terms of this list of synonyms, on the other hand, point to the third meaning recognized by the dictionary of the Royal Spanish Academy: «foreign, strange».In this framework we have exotic and unknown ; the first one expresses a much greater degree of rarity in the object or subject to which it can be applied, since the second simply denotes that the speaker has first met him and that even So I didn't know about its existence.

The life of an outsider is not always easy, since there is a long list of challenges that must be overcome in order to settle down and lead a comfortable life in your new home.First, there are linguistic barriers, which are an obstacle important even between two countries where the same language is spoken; in fact, in these cases the difficulty may be greater than in the others, due to the need to "relearn" the meaning of many of the most common words.

Cultural differences that can be seen in the Daily life also makes it difficult for the integration of an outsider: from the conventions of gestural communication to job search, through the characteristics of public transport and business hours, life abroad is much more difficult than most people believe when packing.Perhaps the biggest challenge is to accept uprooting and adapt to what the new place has to offer.

In some countries, the idea of ​​a stranger is used as a synonym for visitor , especially in the field of sport : “Deportivo San Antonio defeated as stranger to Atletico Amanecer ”, “ The team led by Marcos Trattomonte got a tie as a stranger in his last presentation ”.