total stranger

total stranger

Someone with whom one has absolutely no previous association. My mom and dad didn't come to see our son until he was nearly three years old, so, to him, they were total strangers! She thought it was terribly funny to go up to total strangers and begin conversations with them as if they had been lifelong friends.
See also: stranger, total
Farlex Dictionary of Idioms.
See also:
  • come down hard on (someone or something)
  • come down hard on someone
  • dad fetch my buttons
  • Dad fetch my buttons!
  • fetch
  • be toast
  • be in for it
  • be waiting for the other shoe to drop
  • a girl thing
  • curse at
References in classic literature
Her light flow of talk, and her lively familiarity of manner with a total stranger, were accompanied by an unaffected naturalness and an easy inborn confidence in herself and her position, which would have secured her the respect of the most audacious man breathing.
Even at the time he had thought it strange that, on the strength of a single evening spent together, Nutty should have invited a total stranger to make an indefinite visit to his home.
Devil a bit of it--the face of a total stranger! Up jumps Bruce, with his heart going full gallop all in a moment, and searches for the captain on deck, and finds him much as usual, with his calculations done, and his latitude and longitude off his mind for the day.
Approaching the village, he had been startled by seeing the dark gentleman (a total stranger to him) stretched prostrate on the grass at the roadside--so far as he could judge, in a swoon.
They merely observed that he was short, that he was dressed in black, and that he was a total stranger to them -- and continued their homeward walk, without thinking more about the loitering foot-passenger whom they had met on their way back.
The girl blushed in mortification at the very thought that she could cling so resolutely to the memory of a total stranger, and--still greater humiliation--long in the secret depths of her soul to see him again.
To him it was the most natural thing in the world thus to be familiarly seized and shaken about by a total stranger, while a jovial voice muttered: "That's right, dog.
I can have no intention of offending you, seeing that I am a total stranger to you and to Mr.
"Here is a young lady," he said, "who is a total stranger to me."
"Call me Turan," replied the man, for it had come to him that if Tara of Helium recognized him as the man whose impetuous avowal of love had angered her that day in the gardens of The Warlord, her situation might be rendered infinitely less bearable than were she to believe him a total stranger. Then, too, as a simple panthan* he might win a greater degree of her confidence by his loyalty and faithfulness and a place in her esteem that seemed to have been closed to the resplendent Jed of Gathol.
It was as if this man had known her recent history; yet he was a total stranger.
Tarzan spoke to the girl, thanking her for the sacrifice she had made for him, a total stranger.
Then he could not help himself, he hurried on to catch her up, eager and anxious, only to find that it was a total stranger. Men came back from the country, and he went with Dunsford to have tea at an A.
Taken aback by the sight of a total stranger, who bowed with a tolerably awkward air, she looked at me with a coolly courteous expression and an adorable pout, in which I, who knew her secret, could read the full extent of her disappointment.
Luker, or some such name--though the man is, of course, a total stranger to her."