Etymology

From Tamil paraiyar. Parai refers in Tamil to a type of large drum designed to announce king's notices to the public. The people who made a living using the parai were called paraiyar; in the caste ridden society they were in lower strata, hence the derisive paraiah and pariah. Now, the term is used to describe an outcast in English.

n. [Tamil. paraiyan, drummer, from parai, drum: a pariah was a hereditary drumbeater.]

Noun

1. An outcast
2. A demographic group, species, or community that is generally despised.
3. Someone in exile
4. A member of one of the oppressed social castes in India.

Quotations

• 1842 -- William Makepeace Thackeray, The Fitz-Boodle Papers (Fitz-Boodle's Confessions, preface http://etext.library.adelaide.edu.au/t/thackeray/william_makepeace/fitz/preface.html)

  What is this smoking that it should be considered a crime? I believe in my heart that women are jealous of it, as of a rival. They speak of it as of some secret, awful vice that seizes upon a man, and makes him a pariah from genteel society.

• 1985 — Robert Holmes, The Two Doctors, p 14

  'I'm a pariah, outlawed from Time Lord society.'