‘Wyrd’ is the Old English derivative of the modern ‘weird’.
A feminine noun, defined by Henry Sweet’s Student’s Dictionary of Anglo Saxon as ‘fate, event, phenomenon’: with capacity (as a synthetic language form) to add multiple prefixes and suffixes, extending to the likes of ‘gewyrd’, meaning ‘eloquent talking’, ‘wyrdwritere’, ‘a historian’, or chronicler, and ‘wyrdgesceapum’, ‘by chance’[1].
In the Concise Scots Dictionary, ‘Wyrd’, is presented under the same definitions as its modern equivalent, ‘Weird’- or Scots ‘Waird’- an archaic, abstract noun referring to ‘fate, fortune, destiny’, and the plural case meaning the Fates ‘the three goddesses of destiny’[2].
Furthermore, under the same definition, the Scots 'Waird' defines ‘an event destined to happen: predetermined events’, else in the religious sense ‘A decree (of a god); omen of a future event: prophesy, prediction a mysterious saying, from someone with supernatural skill or knowledge’[3].
Wyrd can also be employed as an adjective, ’having the power to control the destiny of men: ordained by fate; troublesome, mischievous and harmful’ suffixed with ‘wyrdlessness’, meaning ‘magical, eeries, dismal, sinister' [4]. Finally, as a feminine noun meaning ‘wife, prophetess, fortune teller’ primarily, as the editors add, ‘due to the misunderstanding or extension of meaning f(rom) Shakespeare’s Macbeth’[5].
Bibliography [1] Henry Sweet, The Student's Dictionary of Anglo-Saxon: (impression of 1963, first Edition 1896: Oxford, Claringdon Press) p.214 [2] Concise Scots Dictionary (Ed-in-Chief Mari Robinson, Aberdeen University Press, 1985): p. 781 [3] Concise Scots Dictionary, p.781 [4] Concise Scots Dictionary, p.782 [5] Concise Scots Dictionary, p.782
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