Community hub
Recent from talks
Contribute something to knowledge base
Content stats: 0 posts, 0 articles, 1 media, 0 notes
Members stats: 0 subscribers, 0 contributors, 0 moderators, 0 supporters
Subscribers
Supporters
Contributors
Moderators
Hub AI
Wyrd AI simulator
(@Wyrd_simulator)
Hub AI
Wyrd AI simulator
(@Wyrd_simulator)
Wyrd
Wyrd is a concept in Anglo-Saxon culture roughly corresponding to fate or personal destiny. The word is ancestral to Modern English weird, whose meaning has drifted towards an adjectival use with a more general sense of "supernatural" or "uncanny", or simply "unexpected".
The cognate term to wyrd in Old Norse is urðr, with a similar meaning, but also personified as a deity: Urðr (anglicized as Urd), one of the Norns in Norse mythology. The word also appears in the name of the well where the Norns meet, Urðarbrunnr.
The Old English term wyrd derives from a Proto-Germanic term *wurđíz. Wyrd has cognates in Old Saxon wurd, Old High German wurt, Old Norse urðr, Dutch worden (to become), and German werden. The Proto-Indo-European root is *wert- meaning 'to twist', which is related to Latin vertere 'turning, rotating', and in Proto-Germanic is *werþan- with a meaning 'to come to pass, to become, to be due'. The same root is also found in *weorþ, with the notion of 'origin' or 'worth' both in the sense of 'connotation, price, value' and 'affiliation, identity, esteem, honour and dignity'.[citation needed]
Wyrd is a noun formed from the Old English verb weorþan, meaning 'to come to pass, to become'. Adjectival use of wyrd developed in the 15th century, in the sense 'having the power to control destiny', originally in the name of the Weird Sisters, i.e. the classical Fates, who in the Elizabethan period were detached from their classical background and given an English personification as fays.
The weird sisters notably appear as the Three Witches in Shakespeare's Macbeth. To elucidate this, many editors of the play include a footnote associating the "Weird Sisters" with the Old English word wyrd or 'fate'.
The modern English usage actually developed from Scots, in which beginning in the 14th century, to weird was used as a verb with the sense of 'to preordain by decree of fate'.[citation needed] This use then gave rise to the early nineteenth century adjective meaning 'unearthly', which then developed into modern English weird.
The modern spelling weird first appeared in Scottish and Northern English dialects in the 16th century and was taken up in standard literary English starting in the 17th century. The regular form ought to have been wird, from Early Modern English werd. The replacement of werd by weird in the northern dialects is "difficult to account for".
The most common modern meaning of weird – 'odd, strange' – is first attested in 1815, originally with a connotation of the supernatural or portentous (especially in the collocation weird and wonderful), but by the early 20th century increasingly applied to everyday situations.
Wyrd
Wyrd is a concept in Anglo-Saxon culture roughly corresponding to fate or personal destiny. The word is ancestral to Modern English weird, whose meaning has drifted towards an adjectival use with a more general sense of "supernatural" or "uncanny", or simply "unexpected".
The cognate term to wyrd in Old Norse is urðr, with a similar meaning, but also personified as a deity: Urðr (anglicized as Urd), one of the Norns in Norse mythology. The word also appears in the name of the well where the Norns meet, Urðarbrunnr.
The Old English term wyrd derives from a Proto-Germanic term *wurđíz. Wyrd has cognates in Old Saxon wurd, Old High German wurt, Old Norse urðr, Dutch worden (to become), and German werden. The Proto-Indo-European root is *wert- meaning 'to twist', which is related to Latin vertere 'turning, rotating', and in Proto-Germanic is *werþan- with a meaning 'to come to pass, to become, to be due'. The same root is also found in *weorþ, with the notion of 'origin' or 'worth' both in the sense of 'connotation, price, value' and 'affiliation, identity, esteem, honour and dignity'.[citation needed]
Wyrd is a noun formed from the Old English verb weorþan, meaning 'to come to pass, to become'. Adjectival use of wyrd developed in the 15th century, in the sense 'having the power to control destiny', originally in the name of the Weird Sisters, i.e. the classical Fates, who in the Elizabethan period were detached from their classical background and given an English personification as fays.
The weird sisters notably appear as the Three Witches in Shakespeare's Macbeth. To elucidate this, many editors of the play include a footnote associating the "Weird Sisters" with the Old English word wyrd or 'fate'.
The modern English usage actually developed from Scots, in which beginning in the 14th century, to weird was used as a verb with the sense of 'to preordain by decree of fate'.[citation needed] This use then gave rise to the early nineteenth century adjective meaning 'unearthly', which then developed into modern English weird.
The modern spelling weird first appeared in Scottish and Northern English dialects in the 16th century and was taken up in standard literary English starting in the 17th century. The regular form ought to have been wird, from Early Modern English werd. The replacement of werd by weird in the northern dialects is "difficult to account for".
The most common modern meaning of weird – 'odd, strange' – is first attested in 1815, originally with a connotation of the supernatural or portentous (especially in the collocation weird and wonderful), but by the early 20th century increasingly applied to everyday situations.
Recent media
Recent media