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Odd Word Out
Identify the single item in a group that does not share the property binding the others.
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Identify the single item in a group that does not share the property binding the others.
An odd-word-out task presents a small set of terms and asks you to identify the one that does not belong. The correct answer is the item that lacks a property shared by all the others — category membership, semantic relationship, grammatical form, or any structural feature. The key is to find the single category that includes the majority and excludes exactly one term. Multiple plausible categories often exist; the intended one is the category that partitions the set into (n−1, 1).
Given set S, find x ∈ S such that S \ {x} shares a property P that x does not
- apple, banana, cherry, carrot → carrot (not a fruit)
- run, jump, sleep, swim → sleep (not an active motion verb)
- circle, square, triangle, red → red (not a shape)
How to recognize it
- Look for a single category that fits all but one item
- Check multiple dimensions: meaning, word class, origin, structure
- Verify that the candidate answer is the only one that fails the rule
Common mistakes
- Choosing an item that shares some but not all properties of the majority
- Finding a property only two items share (requires n−1 sharing)
- Overthinking — the intended rule is usually the simplest one that works