weird
Language: English
Part of speech: adj
Pronunciation: ipa: /ˈwɪə(ɹ)d/
ipa: /ˈwiːə(ɹ)d/
ipa: /ˈwiɚd/
ipa: /ˈwɪɚd/
rhymes: -ɪə(ɹ)d
Forms: form: weirder
form: weirdest
form: weïrd
form: wierd
form: weyard
form: weyward
Etymology: 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”). Doublet of wyrd. More at worth.
Obsolete by the 16th century in English, but reintroduced from Middle Scots weird, whence Shakespeare borrowed it in naming the Weird Sisters (originally Weyward Sisters, the Three Witches), reintroducing it to English. The senses “abnormal”, “strange” etc. arose via reinterpretation of Weird Sisters and date from after this reintroduction.
Senses: examples: text: There are lots of weird people in this place.
synonyms: word: odd
word: oddball
word: peculiar
word: strange
word: wacko
word: 5150
word: bananas
word: barking
word: barking mad
word: buggish
word: buggy
word: bughouse
word: barmy
word: batchy
word: batpoop
word: bats
word: batty
word: bonkers
word: bread baskets
word: cracked
word: crackers
word: cra-cra
word: cray
word: cray-cray
word: crazed
word: crazy
word: crazy as a bedbug
word: crazy as a cootie
word: crazy as a cootie bug
word: crazy as a pet coon
word: cuckoo
word: daffy
word: daft
word: demented
word: deranged
word: distraught
word: disturbed
word: doolally
word: dotty
word: eccentric
word: fruit loops
word: gaga
word: hatstand
word: harebrained
word: insane
word: kooky
word: loon
word: loco
word: loony
word: loony tunes
word: loopy
word: lunatic
word: mad
word: mental
word: mentally ill
word: meshigener
word: meshugge
word: moonsick
word: non compos mentis
word: nonsane
word: nucking futs
word: nut job
word: nutballs
word: nut
word: nuts
word: nutso
word: nutty
word: nutter
word: off the beam
word: off the chain
word: over the edge
word: potty
word: psycho
word: psychoceramic
word: psychotic
word: sicko
word: screwy
word: squirrelly
word: starkers
word: tonto
word: unbalanced
word: unsane
word: wackadoodle
word: weird
word: whackjob
word: whacko
word: whacky
word: wode
word: yampy
word: zany
word: apeshit
word: batcrap
word: batshit
word: bat-shit
word: fucked in the head
word: fucked up
word: ripshit
glosses: Having an unusually strange character or behaviour.
examples: text: It was quite weird to bump into all my ex-girlfriends on the same day.
text: It was weird for him to watch boys play with Barbie dolls.
text: The best recent VC discs start from the relentlessness of gabber and digital hardcore, and yank it in a weirder direction.
ref: 1999, SPIN, volume 15, number 3, page 145:
text: […] filled with laphet. Fermented tea leaves kneaded with peanut oil, laphet is, hands-down, Myanmar's weirdest and most wonderful contribution to world cuisine.
ref: 2002 August, Gourmet, volume 62, numbers 7-12, page 71:
synonyms: word: bizarre
word: odd
word: out of the ordinary
word: strange
word: fremd
word: aberrant
word: abnormal
word: alien
word: anomalous
word: as queer as Dick's hatband
word: bizarre
word: curious
word: deviant
word: discrepant
word: eerie
word: eldritch
word: errant
word: exceptional
word: extraordinary
word: fey
word: forby
word: freak
word: freakish
word: freaky
word: fremd
word: funny
word: heteroclite
word: hinky
word: incongruous
word: incongruitous
word: irregular
word: kooky
word: monstrous
word: nonstandard
word: odd
word: outlandish
word: out of the ordinary
word: outré
word: peculiar
word: quaint
word: queer
word: queer as a clockwork orange
word: queer as a nine bob note
word: queer as a three dollar bill
word: queer as a coot
word: queer as Dick's hatband
word: rare
word: rum
word: rummy
word: selcouth
word: seld
word: singular
word: strange
word: trippy
word: uncanny
word: uncommon
word: unconventional
word: unearthly
word: unexpected
word: unreasonable
word: unusual
word: unwonted
word: weird
word: weirdsome
word: yampy
glosses: Deviating from the normal; bizarre.
examples: text: a weird story
text: In his introduction to the 1955 volume, [Ray] Bradbury singles out these stories as oddities in his canon — he wrote this kind of tale before his twenty-sixth birthday (1946), and rarely since. They are pure fantasy of the "weird" sort and include some of Bradbury's most striking pieces: "The Scythe" (1943), "The Lake" (1944), "The Jar" (1944), "Skeleton" (1945), and "The Small Assassin" (1946)
ref: 1978, Jeffrey Helterman, Richard Layman, editors, Dictionary of Literary Biography, Volume 2: American Novelists Since World War II, Detroit, M.A.: Gale Research Company, →ISBN, page 62, column 1:
glosses: Relating to weird fiction ("a macabre subgenre of speculative fiction").
synonyms: word: fateful
word: foreordained
word: predestined
word: destined
word: doomed
word: fated
word: fateful
word: fatidic
word: foreordained
word: predestined
word: predevote
word: preordained
word: weird
glosses: Of or pertaining to the Fates.
glosses: Connected with fate or destiny; able to influence fate.
examples: text: Whiles I ſtood rapt in the wonder of it, came Miſſiues from the King, who all-hail'd me Thane of Cawdor, by which Title before, these weyward Sisters saluted me, and referr'd me to the comming on of time, with haile, King that ſhalt be.
ref: c. 1606 (date written), William Shakespeare, “The Tragedie of Macbeth”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, →OCLC, [Act I, scene v], page 134, column 1:
text: Those sweet, low tones, that seemed like a weird incantation.
ref: 1847 November 1, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Evangeline, a Tale of Acadie, Boston, Mass.: William D. Ticknor & Company, →OCLC, part I, page 134:
text: It may be in that dark hour at the burn-foot, before the spate caught her, she had been given grace to resist her adversary and fling herself upon God's mercy. And it would seem that it had been granted; for when he came to the Skerburnfoot, there in the corner sat the weird wife Alison, dead as a stone.
ref: 1902, John Buchan, The Outgoing of the Tide:
text: Naphtha lamps shed a weird light over a busy scene, for the work was being continued night and day. A score or so of sturdy navvies were shovelling and picking along the track.
ref: 1912, Victor Whitechurch, Thrilling Stories of the Railway:
synonyms: witchish
witchlike
witchly
witchy
glosses: Of or pertaining to witches or witchcraft; supernatural; unearthly; suggestive of witches, witchcraft, or unearthliness; wild; uncanny.
examples: text: There was a weird light shining above the hill.
synonyms: eerie
spooky
uncanny
glosses: Having supernatural or preternatural power.
Derived terms: one weird trick
weird and wonderful
weird-ass
weirden
weird fiction
weirdie
weirding
weirdist
weirdly
weird matching
weirdness
weird number
weirdo
weird out
weird sister
weirdsome