Subtitles section Play video Print subtitles Hi this is this is Tutor Nick P and this is Word Origin 61. The word origin today is weird. Okay. Let's take a look at the note here. The origin of this word dates all the way back to the Greek and Roman mythology, especially Greek. It originally started in Greek. Remember that the Romans conquered the Greeks and they adopted all their mythology anyway. But it really started in Greek mythology and was used to mean fate or destiny. That was... that's what the original word meant. It eventually involved into someone who controlled another person's fate due to the three ancient virgin goddesses called The Fates. Yeah. So they supposedly had control of people's fate or destiny. This also continued in Norse mythology. Remember Norse mythology that's the one in like the Scandinavian area you know, the one where today we probably mostly think if it connected to somebody like Thor, the superhero. Thor and Odin and Loki . They all come from Norse mythology. Okay. But remember that was very far north and then that also had an effect on England or the British because you know they got to hear about that. And we're described as odd and scary in appearance. Okay. They started to be referred to as the Weird Sisters and they were often associated with witchcraft. The old British word weird well they used to spell at W-Y -R-D eventually evolved into the word weird today. You know the way we spell today W-E-I- R-D. Okay. Let's continue. Shakespeare used this idea as well in his famous play Macbeth. And that's one of his more famous plays too. The three witches were based on The Fates. That's where he kind of got the idea from or maybe through the Norse mythology as well and were considered to be prophets who predicted Macbeth's rise to becoming King. Okay. There used to be another meaning from an 1828 dictionary for weird meaning skilled in witchcraft. So, so that idea held on for a long time. Although we don't really associate it with witchcraft today but you know, that's in part of its history. This led to our modern definition of weird meaning very strange or uncanny. Well uncanny means kind of like not natural or mysterious. So this is how it evolved into this meaning that we have today. Okay. Anyway, I hope you enjoyed it. I hope you felt it was informative. Thank you for your time. Bye-bye.
B2 US mythology norse weird witchcraft greek macbeth English Tutor Nick P Word Origins (61) Weird 12 0 anitawu12 posted on 2019/08/07 More Share Save Report Video vocabulary