How to name a person who is not like most? One option is the "white crow". The meaning of phraseologism will be considered with clear examples.
Definition
Let's start with the obvious. Crows are usually black, sometimes black with gray, but by no means white. Albinos are generally a rare occurrence.
Hence the white crow (the meaning of phraseological units see below) is an object that stands out from the general series. This is not just a quantitative difference, but a natural internal feature of something that creates a completely different view of things. Misty wording. Examples will help us clarify it.
Examples
Imagine a normal school environment. With the usual division into "bullies" and "nerds." Hooligans do not study, they like to scandal in the broadest sense of the word. Botanists, on the contrary, are diligent students, do not drink alcohol, read books. The reader knows for sure both those and those. So, the white crow (the meaning of phraseological unit is studied with all care) is a bully who tremblingly loves books, and absolutely any: historical, artistic, scientific.
He is considered a man "not of this world" as colleagues, hooligans, and botanists. People are prone to maximalism, so you have to be a bully or a nerd, but to the very end, "to the bottom," as V.V. Mayakovsky said. A person who perceives reality as a mosaic in which elements can be shuffled freely makes a strange and wonderful impression on others. They say this: “Oh! There’s a white crow. " The meaning of phraseology is now without any difficulties.
This is not a sentence.
Actually, it’s not so bad to be different from your environment, because it can be so-so. But one must understand that this characteristic does not mean anything. Among the bullies, the person reading books is a white crow. Then, for various reasons, a company can change, and a person will end up in an environment where it is embarrassing not to read, not to be interested in something, not to develop.
There is a wonderful literary analogy of a person who would use the definition of “white crow” (the meaning of phraseology, an example with it was a little earlier, but we still decided to specify our reasoning). Speech, of course, about Alex from Burgess's work A Clockwork Orange. The main character of the work, no doubt, is a terrible person, but at the same time he has a developed (or innate) sense of beauty and some kind of mind. This distinguishes him from the general series.