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Glite Dictionary
to feel like a leper

to feel like a leper

9.9
People avoid you and treat you like an outcast
  • idiom
  • Slur
translation icon : sentirse marginado
  • It's hard not to feel like a leper when everyone ignores you at a party.

Examples

  • Ever since his colleagues found out about his mistake, he has felt like a leper at work.

  • After the embarrassing incident, she felt like a leper whenever she entered the room.

  • I feel like a leper here.

  • Do you feel like a leper sometimes?

  • After the embarrassing incident, she felt like a leper whenever she entered the room.

  • Ever since his colleagues found out about his mistake, he has felt like a leper at work.

  • It's hard not to feel like a leper when everyone ignores you at a party.

Synonyms

to feel like an alien
vsto feel like a leper
  • Informal
2 7.0

To be out of place among the people around you

is about being avoided or rejected rather than simply not fitting in
to feel like a ghost
vsto feel like a leper
1 8.4

To seem invisible because other people ignore you

is about being actively avoided or rejected by others

How Excluded

to feel like a leper
  • Slur
9.9
shunning
1 7.2
scorned
1 5.8
left out
119 3.6

Surface Forms

feel like a leper infinitive
felt like a leper past
felt like a leper past participle
feeling like a leper present participle
feels like a leper third person singular

Morphology

feel + like + a + leper

The phrase is a straightforward simile: 'feel' (experience) + 'like a leper' (being an outcast avoided by others) yields the meaning 'feel avoided or excluded.' A B1 learner who knows the noun 'leper' as an outcast can directly compose this meaning, so the expression is transparently built from its constituents.

Etymology

The idiom feel like a leper comes from long ago when a leper, a person with a serious illness, had to live apart and people would avoid or ignore them. So, to feel like a leper means 'to feel avoided', 'excluded', or 'rejected'.