Definitions

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • noun Fate, destiny, particular in an Anglo-Saxon or Norse context.

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • noun fate personified; any one of the three Weird Sisters

Etymologies

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

From Old English wyrd

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Examples

  • The fellow said: ‘We’re making a big movie and putting together a band of famous musicians together called the wyrd sisters.

    Wyrd Sisters take on Warner 2005

  • The fellow said: ‘We’re making a big movie and putting together a band of famous musicians together called the wyrd sisters.

    Wyrd Sisters take on Warner 2005

  • A wyrd or fate is not an inalterable future, so much as a part of the present we have not yet experienced.

    she sewed my new blue jeans gregvaneekhout 2009

  • Me þæt þuhte wrætlicu wyrd, þa ic þæt wundor gefrægn, þæt se wyrm forswealg wera gied sumes, þeof in þystro, þrymfæstne cwide ond þæs strangan staþol.

    Archive 2009-02-01 Mary Kate Hurley 2009

  • Me þæt þuhte wrætlicu wyrd, þa ic þæt wundor gefrægn, þæt se wyrm forswealg wera gied sumes, þeof in þystro, þrymfæstne cwide ond þæs strangan staþol.

    A Digital Codex Mary Kate Hurley 2009

  • But it works like wyrd, where the beginning is wide open and it narrows in and in so that at the end there's only one place for it to go.

    Boing Boing 2009

  • Beorht wæron burgræced, burnsele monige, heah horngestreon, heresweg micel, meodoheall monig mondreama full, oþþæt þæt onwende wyrd seo swiþe.

    Making Light: Open thread 134 2010

  • This is our wyrd; our personal Destiny is to reach the stage where we know this, and where we put into practice what we have learn t.

    Satanism Exposed: The ONA Fake Org | Disinformation 2008

  • OK, if you're going to drag Comus into it great band, BTW, then I'll just same time and suggest Googling the terms "wyrd folk", "psych-folk" and "acid folk".

    For the Love of a Daughter Anne Johnson 2008

  • I find the concepts of moira and wyrd really useful as they apply to characters.

    Another Shelter Review Susan Palwick 2007

Comments

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  • wyrd "what will be": fate (from IE root meaning to turn)

    January 25, 2007

  • Whoa--that's cool. I used to call Microsoft Word 5.1a "Ms Wyrd." Seems strangely appropriate.

    October 13, 2007

  • Wyrd is a concept in Anglo-Saxon and Nordic culture roughly corresponding to Fate. It is ancestral to Modern English weird, which has acquired a very different signification. The cognate term in old Norse is Urðr, with a similar meaning, but also personalized as one of the Norns, Urðr (anglicized Urd). The concept corresponding to "fate" in Old Norse is Ørlǫg.

    The Well of Urd is the holy well, the Well Spring, the source of water for the world tree Yggdrasil.

    _Wikipedia

    February 11, 2008