How “weird” went from meaning “fate” to describing your fridge
"Weird" is a weird word
The word “weird” is so common we barely notice it, but a thousand years ago its ancestor, the Old English “wyrd,” meant “fate” or “destiny” and haunted the bleakest poetry of the era. This article traces how a word for the inexorable logic of the universe became a casual label for everyday oddities, from its survival in Scots to its near-disappearance, and the pivotal role of Shakespeare’s “Macbeth,” a typo, and the Romantic poets in shaping its modern meaning.
“Wyrd is totally inexorable.” — The Wanderer
- bhk
The increase in usage in the latter half of the 20th century is interesting to me, because I recall being surprised in elementary school that "weird" was a dictionary word. I thought it was informal slang among kids, having associated its usage not with adults but with those my age, who generally found its sound amusing.
- jll29
Engl. "weird" (happen, to become) ~ German "werden" (will [be]).
Regarding irregularity of the English language, there's the well-known urban poem:
Dearest creature in creation,
Study English pronunciation.
I will teach you in my verse
Sounds like corpse, corps, horse, and worse.
I will keep you, Suzy, busy,
Make your head with heat grow dizzy.
Tear in eye, your dress will tear.
So shall I! Oh hear my prayer.
Just compare heart, beard, and heard,
Dies and diet, lord and word,
Sword and sward, retain and Britain.
(Mind the latter, how it's written.)
Now I surely will not plague you
With such words as plaque and ague.
But be careful how you speak:
Say break and steak, but bleak and streak;
Cloven, oven, how and low,
Script, receipt, show, poem, and toe.
Hear me say, devoid of trickery,
Daughter, laughter, and Terpsichore,
Typhoid, measles, topsails, aisles,
Exiles, similes, and reviles;
Scholar, vicar, and cigar,
Solar, mica, war and far;
One, anemone, Balmoral,
Kitchen, lichen, laundry, laurel;
Gertrude, German, wind and mind,
Scene, Melpomene, mankind.
Billet does not rhyme with ballet,
Bouquet, wallet, mallet, chalet.
Blood and flood are not like food,
Nor is mould like should and would.
Viscous, viscount, load and broad,
Toward, to forward, to reward.
And your pronunciation's OK
When you correctly say croquet,
Rounded, wounded, grieve and sieve,
Friend and fiend, alive and live.
Ivy, privy, fa […]
- pessimizer
Weirdly, the word seems to have mostly maintained its meaning through these strange bottlenecks. Something that is weird is something that inexplicably is; something that has to be dealt with even if not understood.
We don't yet know surely the path by which we will meet our fates, but nevertheless we will meet them.