| The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language: Fourth Edition. 2000. |
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| weird |
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| PRONUNCIATION: |  wîrd |
| ADJECTIVE: | Inflected forms: weird·er, weird·est
1. Of, relating to, or suggestive of the preternatural or supernatural. 2. Of a strikingly odd or unusual character; strange. 3. Archaic Of or relating to fate or the Fates. | | NOUN: | 1a. Fate; destiny. b. One's assigned lot or fortune, especially when evil. 2. often Weird Greek & Roman Mythology One of the Fates. | | TRANSITIVE & INTRANSITIVE VERB: | Inflected forms: weird·ed, weird·ing, weirds
Slang To experience or cause to experience an odd, unusual, and sometimes uneasy sensation. Often used with out. | | ETYMOLOGY: | Middle English werde, fate, having power to control fate, from Old English wyrd, fate. See wer-2 in Appendix I. | | OTHER FORMS: | weird ly —ADVERB
weirdness —NOUN
| | SYNONYMS: | weird, eerie, uncanny, unearthly These adjectives refer to what is of a mysteriously strange, usually frightening nature. Weird may suggest the operation of supernatural influences, or merely the odd or unusual: “The person of the house gave a weird little laugh” (Charles Dickens). “There is a weird power in a spoken word” (Joseph Conrad). Something eerie inspires fear or uneasiness and implies a sinister influence: “At nightfall on the marshes, the thing was eerie and fantastic to behold” (Robert Louis Stevenson). Uncanny refers to what is unnatural and peculiarly unsettling: “The queer stumps … had uncanny shapes, as of monstrous creatures” (John Galsworthy). Something unearthly seems so strange and unnatural as to come from or belong to another world: “He could hear the unearthly scream of some curlew piercing the din” (Henry Kingsley).
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| The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition. Copyright © 2000 by Houghton Mifflin Company. Published by the Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved. |
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