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Shakespeare's Connection to Weird
You may know weird as a generalized term describing something unusual, but this word also has older meanings that are more specific. Weird derives from the Old English noun wyrd, essentially meaning "fate." By the 8th century, the plural wyrde had begun to appear in texts as a gloss for Parcae, the Latin name for the Fates—three goddesses who spun, measured, and cut the thread of life. In the 15th and 16th centuries, Scots authors employed werd or weird in the phrase "weird sisters" to refer to the Fates. William Shakespeare adopted this usage in Macbeth, in which the "weird sisters" are depicted as three witches. Subsequent adjectival use of weird grew out of a reinterpretation of the weird used by Shakespeare.
Examples of weird in a Sentence
Steve Nadis, Astronomy, October 2005
If you looked at them closely you realized they were carved with weird, pagan creatures, more like hobgoblins than men, half hidden among trees and leaves—here acanthus and there what looked like a palm tree.
—Kate Atkinson, Case Histories, 2004
In these masterpieces a surface realism of presentation gives the fantastic events a kind of weird plausibility …
—David Lodge, The Art of Fiction, 1992
David Browne, Rolling Stone, 24 Oct. 2025
Even the people who make this content are starting to feel slightly weird about the whole arrangement.
—Daniel Kolitz, Harpers Magazine, 24 Oct. 2025
Constraints give creative energy a direction to travel, shaping the search space while also confining it — just enough that exploration becomes deeper, weirder, and more productive.
—Big Think, 23 Oct. 2025
Until then, things will get very weird, very fast.
—Victor Riparbelli, Fortune, 23 Oct. 2025
See All Example Sentences for weird
Cite this Entry
“Weird.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/weird. Accessed 30 Oct. 2025.
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