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WEIRD
| Pronunciation (US): |  | (GB): | |
I. (noun)
Sense 1
Meaning:
Fate personified; any one of the three Weird Sisters
Synonyms:
Weird; Wyrd
Classified under:
Hypernyms ("Weird" is a kind of...):
Anglo-Saxon deity ((Anglo-Saxon mythology) a deity worshipped by the Anglo-Saxons)
II. (adjective)
Sense 1
Meaning:
Strikingly odd or unusual
Example:
some trick of the moonlight; some weird effect of shadow
Classified under:
Similar:
strange; unusual (being definitely out of the ordinary and unexpected; slightly odd or even a bit weird)
Derivation:
weirdness (strikingly out of the ordinary)
Sense 2
Meaning:
Suggesting the operation of supernatural influences
Example:
he could hear the unearthly scream of some curlew piercing the din
Synonyms:
eldritch; uncanny; unearthly; weird
Classified under:
Similar:
supernatural (not existing in nature or subject to explanation according to natural laws; not physical or material)
Derivation:
weirdness (strikingly out of the ordinary)
Context examples:
Every night, regularly, at nine, at twelve, at three, they lifted a nocturnal song, a weird and eerie chant, in which it was Buck’s delight to join.
(The Call of the Wild, by Jack London)
Hagar, the witch, chanted an awful incantation over her kettleful of simmering toads, with weird effect.
(Little Women, by Louisa May Alcott)
Once only had I known him to fail, in the case of the King of Bohemia and of the Irene Adler photograph; but when I looked back to the weird business of the Sign of Four, and the extraordinary circumstances connected with the Study in Scarlet, I felt that it would be a strange tangle indeed which he could not unravel.
(The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)
It was weird, strangely weird.
(The Sea-Wolf, by Jack London)
What is important about it is that it demonstrates the statue locations themselves are not a weird ritual place – the ahu and moai represent ritual in a sense of there is symbolic meaning to them, but they are integrated into the lives of the community," said study co-author Professor Carl Lipo of Binghamton University.
(Scientists report correlation between locations of Easter Island statues and water resources, Wikinews)
I dared not wait to see him return, for I feared to see those weird sisters.
(Dracula, by Bram Stoker)
Even as we looked a high whickering cry, the call of some weird animal, rang clear out of the darkness.
(The Lost World, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)
I had a blood test one time that seemed weird to my doctor and me—and not in a good way.
(AstrologyZone.com, by Susan Miller)
In the fall of the year they penetrated a weird lake country, sad and silent, where wildfowl had been, but where then there was no life nor sign of life—only the blowing of chill winds, the forming of ice in sheltered places, and the melancholy rippling of waves on lonely beaches.
(The Call of the Wild, by Jack London)
We were fairly accustomed to receive weird telegrams at Baker Street, but I have a particular recollection of one which reached us on a gloomy February morning, some seven or eight years ago, and gave Mr. Sherlock Holmes a puzzled quarter of an hour.
(The Return of Sherlock Holmes, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)
