weird

[weerd]

See more synonyms for weird on Thesaurus.com

adjective, weird·er, weird·est.

involving or suggesting the supernatural; unearthly or uncanny: a weird sound; weird lights.
fantastic; bizarre: a weird getup.
Archaic. concerned with or controlling fate or destiny.

noun Chiefly Scot.

fate; destiny.
fate(def 6).

Origin of weird

before 900; (noun) Middle English (northern form of wird), Old English wyrd; akin to worth²; (adj.) Middle English, orig. attributive noun in phrase werde sisters the Fates (popularized as appellation of the witches in Macbeth)

Related formsweird·ly, adverbweird·ness, noun

Synonyms for weird

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1. unnatural, preternatural. weird, eerie, unearthly, uncanny refer to that which is mysterious and apparently outside natural law. Weird refers to that which is suggestive of the fateful intervention of supernatural influences in human affairs: the weird adventures of a group lost in the jungle. Eerie refers to that which, by suggesting the ghostly, makes one's flesh creep: an eerie moaning from a deserted house. Unearthly refers to that which seems by its nature to belong to another world: an unearthly light that preceded the storm. Uncanny refers to that which is mysterious because of its apparent defiance of the laws established by experience: an uncanny ability to recall numbers.

Antonyms for weird

1. natural.

Dictionary.com Unabridged Based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2018

Related Words for weirdness

peculiarity, quirk, oddity, newness, weirdness, idiosyncrasy, anomaly, flaw, deformity, irregularity, foible, eccentricity, delusion, strangeness, abnormality, novelty, exoticism, unconventionality, foreignness, nonconformity

Examples from the Web for weirdness

Contemporary Examples of weirdness

You now had jokes in common, passions, dreams, and that you had a weirdness of your own that she actually wanted to understand.
Is Bigger Better for St. Vincent?
David Yaffe
December 4, 2014
Where do you feel the weirdness of your latest collection came from?
Tony Earley's Imaginary Friends
Mindy Farabee
September 2, 2014
The first is to describe planets in our galaxy in all their weirdness and wonder.
The Exoplanet That Wasn’t There
Matthew R. Francis
July 6, 2014
Like a layered wedding cake, each experience built on the weirdness of the previous one.
HONOR THIS!
Moral Courage
February 3, 2014
The director of Blue Velvet and Mulholland Drive has found a new way to bolster his unparalleled canon of weirdness.
David Lynch Goes From Film to Photos with ‘The Factory Photographs’
Nico Hines
January 22, 2014

Historical Examples of weirdness

I looked round, and a feeling of awe and weirdness crept over me.
The First Violin
Jessie Fothergill
There wasn't any weirdness about the ship when I woke in the sunlight.
Romance
Joseph Conrad and F.M. Hueffer
The unexpected wild vehemence and weirdness of it were striking in the extreme.
Recollections
David Christie Murray
Awe and weirdness followed in the trail of that cannon ball of wind.
The Riflemen of the Ohio
Joseph A. Altsheler
The changing lights added to the beauty and weirdness of the scene.
Five Thousand Miles Underground
Roy Rockwood

British Dictionary definitions for weirdness

weird

adjective

suggestive of or relating to the supernatural; eerie
strange or bizarre
archaic of or relating to fate or the Fates

noun

archaic, mainly Scot
1. fate or destiny
2. one of the Fates
dree one's weird Scot See dree

verb

(tr) Scot to destine or ordain by fate; predict

Word Origin for weird

Old English (ge) wyrd destiny; related to weorthan to become, Old Norse urthr bane, Old Saxon wurd; see worth ²

Collins English Dictionary - Complete & Unabridged 2012 Digital Edition © William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd. 1979, 1986 © HarperCollins Publishers 1998, 2000, 2003, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2009, 2012

Word Origin and History for weirdness

weird

Old English wyrd (n.) "fate, destiny," literally "that which comes," from Proto-Germanic *wurthis (cf. Old Saxon wurd, Old High German wurt "fate," Old Norse urðr "fate, one of the three Norns"), from PIE *wert- "to turn, wind," (cf. German werden, Old English weorðan "to become"), from root *wer- (3) "to turn, bend" (see versus). For sense development from "turning" to "becoming," cf. phrase turn into "become."

The modern sense of weird developed from Middle English use of weird sisters for the three fates or Norns (in Germanic mythology), the goddesses who controlled human destiny. They were portrayed as odd or frightening in appearance, as in "Macbeth," which led to the adjectival meaning "odd-looking, uncanny," first recorded 1815.