Old English wyrd 'destiny', of Germanic origin. The adjective (late Middle English) originally meant 'having the power to control destiny', and was used especially in the Weird Sisters, originally referring to the Fates, later the witches in Shakespeare's Macbeth; the latter use gave rise to the sense 'unearthly' (early 19th century).

• To the Anglo-Saxons weird was a noun, spelled wyrd and meaning ‘fate, destiny’. The Weirds were the Fates, the three Greek goddesses who presided over the birth and life of humans. The adjective originally meant ‘having the power to control destiny’, and was used especially from the Middle Ages in the Weird Sisters, for the Fates, and later also the witches in Shakespeare's Macbeth. The modern use, ‘very strange, bizarre’, as in weird and wonderful, dates from the early 19th century.