Outrageous is anything unusual or slightly unacceptable. Imagine a police man entering a person's room to steal a television; that's outrageous. Anything considered outrageous is always shocking and unacceptable. I walk into a police station and start asking for food to eat sounds Funny because that's not usual to people.
The word OUTRAGEOUS can be split as Out-rage , out signifying exceeding and rage, boundary or feelings , when combined ,= exceeding boundary. The society we live in has certain principles guiding moral behavior, if that principle is exceeded, it may likely be considered as being outrageous because it's no longer the normal.
I once saw a photo of a dog sucking from a female goat and I was told of a goat that doesn't eat grass but fresh cooked food. The following examples may have made you imagined some questions in your heart and that's because it doesn't seem normal, the animals had breech the expectations placed on them as entities. Therefore the matter of judging an action to be outrageous is by comparing it to the usual or acceptable expectations placed on it by people from a society or a particular community.
If an action falls within the normal norms then its no longer outrageous. So it's either it's normal or abnormal and whatever is considered as abnormal is outrageous. I bet you will consider it a bizarre if a mango tree bears a cashew fruit. So that's just the simple explanation to what outrageous is, a thin line out of normal that's unacceptable. It's unacceptable because the society consider it so, but once the society consider an action acceptable it no longer becomes outrageous.
I hope I was able to give a well meaning clarity to the Word of the week.
Concise and to the point. Well done.
Thank You.
It's funny how somethings seem more outrageous to some but not others, it really depends on how you live and also perhaps where you grew up. Nice definition of the word xx
Yeah, maybe that's just my perspective about the subject. Thank you for your kind comment