pariah

From Tamil paṟaiyar, meaning a drummer, from paṟai ("drum"), or from the related Malayalam paṟayar / paṟa. The parai drum was used to announce a king's notices, and those who played it were placed in the lower strata of a caste-based society — an alternate theory traces the word instead to Sanskrit para, "distant" or "outsider."

What began as the name for a caste of drummers who performed a public duty became, through the derision of a rigid social hierarchy, a word for anyone pushed to the margins.

The word's two rival origins, drummer and outsider, both point toward the same idea of standing apart from the center.