The journey of 'strange' begins with the Latin preposition 'extra', meaning "outside". From this, the adjective 'extraneus' was formed, describing something that is from the outside, and therefore foreign or external. This term was adopted into Old French as 'estrange', retaining the core sense of foreignness and otherness. Upon entering Middle English, it shed its initial vowel to become 'strange', and its meaning expanded from the concrete sense of "from another country" to the more abstract and psychological sense of "unfamiliar, odd, or puzzling," capturing the feeling evoked by that which lies outside one's normal experience.

The word is a simplex form. It entered English from Old French 'estrange', meaning "foreign, alien, unusual". The Old French term derived from Latin 'extraneus', meaning "external, foreign", which itself comes from 'extra', meaning "outside of".