US /ˈwiɚd/ UK /ˈwɪə(ɹ)d/
adj noun Freq #713

Meanings

  1. 1
    adj

    Strange, unusual, or hard to explain.

    It was quite weird to bump into all my old friends on the same day.

  2. 2
    adj

    Strange in a frightening or mysterious way.

    There was a weird light shining above the hill.

Thesaurus

Synonyms
1 adj · strange, unusual, or hard... bizarrecuriousoddstrange
2 adj · strange in a frightening or... eeriespookyuncanny
Word family
Forms weirderweirdestweirdly
Derived forms weird-assweirdenweirdieweirdingweirdistweirdlessweirdlyweirdnessweirdoweirdsome

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 reinterpretat…

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