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  • 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.

Hi this is this is Tutor Nick P and this is Word Origin 61. The word origin today is

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