The Hidden Grammatical Reason That ‘Weird’ Works
In Old English the word meant, believe it or not, “what the future holds,” as in what we now refer to as fate. The sisters in “Macbeth” were the “weird sisters,” in the meaning of “fate sisters,” telling the future. But they were also portrayed as ghoulish in appearance and attire. With the prominence of this play and similar fate-sister figures in other ones, the sense set in that “weird” meant frighteningly odd.
1 comment:
Oh this is interesting. I was recently in a discussion of the Witch of Endor. The origin of the word used there was "pit" from where said woman would conjur up those thought to be spirits of the dead
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