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I'm looking for a less clunky way of saying "a group of which I'm not a part" or "a group to I don't belong." I would prefer a one-word adjective, so that I could talk about "________ groups."

So far, the closest word to what I'm looking for seems to be outlying:

Outlying (adjective):

Far away from the center of a place; remote from a center or main body. (Merriam-Webster)

This would fit the fact that the group is figuratively far away from me because I'm not a part of it, but I hesitate to use it because it also seems to imply that the group is an outlier from the norm, an extreme or "fringe" group. This connotation is supported by Dictionary.com's secondary definition:

Outlying (adjective):

  1. Lying at a distance from the center or the main body; remote; out-of-the way

  2. Lying outside the boundary or limit

Is there a better adjective than outlying to describe any group, whether mainstream or fringe, to which I don't belong?

EDIT: Here is the context that I would put the word in.

Studies have shown that people are more likely to be suspicious of members of __________ groups and attribute negative qualities to them while overlooking the same qualities in members of their own group.

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  • Are you saying that you are central, and the other members of the group are distant?
    – Mitch
    Feb 25, 2015 at 16:11
  • I'm not a part of the group at all, so the members of the group are distant from me.
    – Nicole
    Feb 25, 2015 at 16:13
  • non-member / unsubscribed / outside groups?
    – Mari-Lou A
    Feb 25, 2015 at 16:30
  • In a military sense a General could use irregulars or partisans, to make it clear that they were nothing to do with him.
    – WS2
    Feb 25, 2015 at 16:35
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    @Nicole sorry, I got distracted and didn't finish my comment. I was going to say, this is where English needs to take more influence from foreign languages and string words together. Then we could call them something like not-member-groups in one word, and nobody would bat an eyelid. There isn't a particular foreign word I was thinking of. Feb 25, 2015 at 16:41

2 Answers 2

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You can use the word "outgroup", which is used in the social sciences as a term to refer to a social group you are not a member of without any implication of the group being "fringe". It's not an adjective, but "outgroup" can like most nouns be used to modify another noun, like "outgroup relationships". If you need to talk about multiple groups, you could simply use the plural "outgroups".

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  • Yup. Ingroups and outgroups were the first thing that came to my mind as well. Feb 25, 2015 at 20:02
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You can refer to them as external groups:

1. coming from outside a place or organization

I would have suggested remote, but current business usage implies that you are part of a remote team.

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