weird

Meanings

Adjective

• Having an unusually strange character or behaviour.
• Deviating from the normal; bizarre.
• Of or pertaining to the Fates.
• Connected with fate or destiny; able to influence fate.
• Of or pertaining to witches or witchcraft; supernatural; unearthly; suggestive of witches, witchcraft, or unearthliness; wild; uncanny.
• Having supernatural or preternatural power.

Noun

• Fate; destiny; luck.
• A prediction.
• A spell or charm.
• That which comes to pass; a fact.
• The Fates (personified).

Verb

• To destine; doom; change by witchcraft or sorcery.
• To warn solemnly; adjure.

Adverb

• In a strange manner.

Related

Similar words

• eerie, spooky, uncanny
• fateful
• kismet, lot, orlay, wyrd
• enchantment, incantation, cantrip
• The Norns
• , strangely, weirdly

Origin

• From Middle English werde, wierde, wirde, wyrede, wurde, from Old English wyrd ("fate"), from Proto-West Germanic *wurdi, from Proto-Germanic *wurdiz, from Proto-Indo-European *wert- ("to turn, wind"). Cognate with Icelandic urður ("fate"). Related to Old English weorþan ("to become"). wyrd. More at worth.
• Weird was extinct by the 16th century in English. It survived in Scots, whence Shakespeare borrowed it in naming the Weird Sisters, reintroducing it to English. The senses "abnormal", "strange" etc. arose via reinterpretation of Weird Sisters and date from after this reintroduction.