weird

Having an unusually strange character or behaviour.

Adjective

  1. Having an unusually strange character or behaviour.
    • There are lots of weird people in this place.

    Synonyms: odd oddball peculiar strange wacko 5150 bananas barking barking mad buggish buggy bughouse barmy batchy batpoop bats batty bonkers bread baskets cracked crackers cra-cra cray cray-cray

  2. Deviating from the normal; bizarre.
    • It was quite weird to bump into all my ex-girlfriends on the same day.
    • It was weird for him to watch boys play with Barbie dolls.
    • The best recent VC discs start from the relentlessness of gabber and digital hardcore, and yank it in a weirder direction. - 1999, SPIN, volume 15, number 3, page 145:

    Synonyms: bizarre odd out of the ordinary strange fremd aberrant abnormal alien anomalous as queer as Dick's hatband booky curious deviant discrepant eerie eldritch errant exceptional extraordinary fey forby freak freakish freaky

  3. Relating to weird fiction ("a macabre subgenre of speculative fiction").
    • a weird story
    • 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...
  4. Belonging, pertaining, or related to fate, destiny, or to the Fates; able to influence fate.
    • 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,...

    Synonyms: fateful foreordained predestined bashert destined doomed fated fatidic predevote preordained weird

  5. Related to witches or witchcraft; supernatural; unearthly; suggestive of witches, witchcraft or unearthliness; uncanny; unearthly.
    • Those sweet, low tones, that seemed like a weird incantation. - 1847 November 1, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Evangeline, a Tale of Acadie, Boston, Mass.: William D. Ticknor & Company, →OCLC, part I, page 134:
    • 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...

    Synonyms: witchish witchlike witchly witchy magicianlike magicianly magiciany weird wizardlike wizardly wizardy

  6. Having super- or preternatural power.
    • 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. - 1912, Victor Whitechurch, Thrilling...

    Synonyms: eerie spooky uncanny

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”); more at worth (verb). Doublet of wyrd, a reborrowing of the original sense and spelling. Obsolete by the 16th century in English, it was reintroduced by Shakespeare, who borrowed Middle Scots weird as weyward in the name of the Weyward Sisters (later respelt as Weird Sisters), meaning “Sisters of Fate”. The senses “abnormal”, “strange” etc., arising from a reinterpretatation of the Sisters' naming, are posterior to his borrowing.

Forms

weirder weirdest weïrd wierd weyard weyward

Derived

one weird trick weird and wonderful weird-ass weirden weird fiction weirdie weirding weirdist weird-looking weirdly weird matching weirdness weird number weirdo weird out weird sister weirdsome

Adverb

  1. In a strange manner.
    • I waltzed into that club just as straight as a goose and I kept tripping over things and people were looking at me weird. - 1972, Edwin Shrake, Strange Peaches: A Novel:
    • Man, you're talking weird! - 1974, Vernard Eller, The Most Revealing Book of the Bible: Making Sense Out of Revelation:

    Synonyms: funny strangely weirdly

Forms

weïrd wierd weyard weyward

Noun

  1. Fate; destiny; luck.
    • Step by reluctant step, he had come to know his weird. The North must be saved from her. - 1965, Poul Anderson, The Corridors of Time, page 226:
    • In the weird of death shall the hapless be whelmed, and from Doom’s dark prison Shall she steal forth never again. - 1912, Arthur S. Way, transl., Medea, Heinemenn, translation of original by Euripides, published 1946,...

    Synonyms: kismet lot orlay wyrd chance destin destiny doom fatality fate foredoom foreordination fortune portion predestination predestiny preordination qadar weird

  2. A prediction.

    Synonyms: foretale foretelling prediction prognostication weird

  3. A spell or charm.
    • Thou shalt bear thy penance lone, / In the Valley of Saint John, / And this weird shall overtake thee;— / Sleep, until a knight shall wake thee, / For feat of arms as far renowned / As warrior of the Table Round. -...

    Synonyms: enchantment

  4. That which comes to pass; a fact.
  5. The Fates.

    Synonyms: Norns

  6. Weirdness.
    • You know why it feels so good to be amongst real friends? They allow you to be your weird and love you for it. Imagine how it would feel to freely let your weird out and have the world love you for it. - 2019, Justin...

Forms

weirds weïrd wierd weyard weyward

Derived

dree one’s weird weirdless

Verb

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

Forms

weirds weirding weirded weïrd wierd weyard weyward