Green’s Dictionary of Slang

1. an odd man out, an unusual person; also attrib.

1958		J. Capka Red Sky at Night 119: By now all the other pilots had got their radio-operators-cum-navigators, who were in fact really radar-set operators. I was the ‘odd bod’.
1974		Adamson & Hanford Zimmer’s Essay 81: Local crims, cunt-starvers, wild-eyed chats, yahoos [...] all these odd bods were armed with woodbreaking equipment.
1999		Observer Rev. 20 June 11: His slatternly wife who spends time with Malcolm, an odd-bod cousin.
2017		T. Spicer Good Girl Stripped Bare 12: I realise I’m a bit of an odd-bod [...] burying my head in books.

2. any non-specific or random person.

1954		(con. 1940s) T.A.G. Hungerford Sowers of the Wind 139: A couple of other odd bods who might be useful some time.
1974		D. Ireland Burn 74: They got some odd bods from base to staff the Bren-carrier.

an eccentric person.

1664		C. Cotton Virgil Travestie (1765) Bk I 15: I doubt he prov’d but very Odd-fish.
1771		Franklin Autobiog. in Works (1887) i 137: He was an odd fish [F&H].
1795		Sporting Mag. May VI 115/1: Odd fish, queer fish, strange fish, droll fish, / In short they be fish out of water.
1802		Sporting Mag. June XX 173/1: Odd fish, quizzes, kids so silly, / Crowd the street from day to day.
1823		C. Lamb Elia Ser. 1 (1835) 5: Humourists, for they were of all descriptions [...] formed a sort of Noah’s ark. Odd fishes.
1837		R. Nicholson Cockney Adventures 4 Nov. 7: ‘Odd fish!’ observed the squire.
1848		Southern Quarterly Rev. Oct. n.p.: What an odd-fish the old man is, sure enough, but mighty good, and as pious a soul as ever lived.
1852		F.E. Smedley Lewis Arundel 116: It puts one too much in mind of ‘jolly dogs,’ or ‘odd fish’.
1872		Schele De Vere Americanisms 621: Odd, when applied to persons, has apparently a. tendency to unite with odd epithets, such as odd-fish or odd-stick.
1917		‘Henry Handel Richardson’ Aus. Felix (1971) 211: He’s such an odd fish.
1925		A. Christie Secret of Chimneys (1956) 179: You know, you’re an odd fish in some ways.
1987		B. Chatwin Songlines 48: What an odd fish!
1998		J. O’Connor Salesman 38: ‘You’re an odd fish,’ she said.
2015		L. McInerney Glorious Heresies 17: They didn’t know she was such an odd fish as to be capable of impromptu executions.

see under firm n.