Klryz
Pronunciation guide: IPA symbols, stress and word endings

Vowels

iːseeɪsite / ɛbedæcat
ɑːfatherɒhot (UK)ɔːlawʊput
uːtooʌcupɜːbirdəabout
eɪdayaɪmyɔɪboyaʊnow
əʊ / oʊgo (UK / US)ɪəneareəhairʊətour

Consonants that look unusual

θthinðthisʃsheʒmeasure
tʃchurchdʒjudgeŋsingjyes

p b t d k g f v s z h m n l r w sound as in ordinary English spelling.

Marks

  • ˈ main stress, before the stressed syllable: /ˈwɔːtə/ water · ˌ lighter (secondary) stress: /ˌʌndəˈstænd/ understand
  • ː a long vowel · (r) an r said only in accents that pronounce it (most American, Scottish, Irish)

Common word endings

  • -s / -es (plurals; he/she form of verbs): /s/ after voiceless sounds (cats), /z/ after voiced (dogs), /ɪz/ after s, z, sh, ch, j sounds (buses, watches). Spelling: -es after s, x, z, ch, sh; consonant + y → -ies (city → cities).
  • -ed (past): /t/ after voiceless sounds (walked), /d/ after voiced (played), /ɪd/ after t or d (wanted). Spelling: love → loved, stop → stopped, carry → carried.
  • -ing: make → making, run → running, see → seeing.
  • Irregular: go, went, gone · be, was, been · see, saw, seen · man → men · child → children · mouse → mice.
  • Older (King James) forms: -eth = -s (he loveth = he loves) · -est with “thou” (thou lovest) · spake = spoke.

English Dictionary · 107,383 entries · Sources & licences

weird

UK /ˈwɪə(ɹ)d/ · US /ˈwiɚd/ adjective, noun, verb, adverb

Forms weirder weirdest weirds weirding weirded wierd weyard weyward

  1. adjective Having an unusually strange character or behaviour. “There are lots of weird people in this place.”
  2. adjective Deviating from the normal; bizarre. “It was quite weird to bump into all my ex-girlfriends on the same day.”
  3. adjective Relating to weird fiction ("a macabre subgenre of speculative fiction"). “a weird story”
  4. adjective Belonging, pertaining, or related to fate, destiny, or to the Fates; able to influence fate.
  5. adjective Related to witches or witchcraft; supernatural; unearthly; suggestive of witches, witchcraft or unearthliness; uncanny; unearthly.
  6. adjective (by extension) Having super- or preternatural power.
  7. noun (archaic) Fate; destiny; luck.
  8. noun A prediction.
  9. noun (obsolete, Scotland) A spell or charm.
  10. noun That which comes to pass; a fact.
  11. noun (archaic, in the plural, personification) The Fates.
  12. noun (uncountable, colloquial) Weirdness.
  13. verb To destine; doom; change by witchcraft or sorcery.
  14. verb To warn solemnly; adjure.
  15. adverb (nonstandard) In a strange manner.

Synonyms

odd oddball peculiar strange wacko 5150 bananas barking barking mad buggish buggy bughouse barmy batchy batpoop bats batty bonkers bread baskets cracked Wyrd eldritch uncanny unearthly

Etymology

From Middle English werde, wierde, wirde, wyrede, wurde, from Old English wyrd (“fate”), from Proto-West Germanic *wurdi, from Proto-Germanic *wurdiz, from Proto-Indo-European *wert- (“to turn, wind”). Cognate with Icelandic urður (“fate”). Related to Old English weorþan (“to become”); more at worth (verb).
Doublet of wyrd, a reborrowing of the original sense and spelling.
Obsolete by the 16th century in English, it was reintroduced by Shakespeare, who borrowed Middle Scots weird as weyward in the name of the Weyward Sisters (later respelt as Weird Sisters), meaning “Sisters of Fate”. The senses “abnormal”, “strange” etc., arising from a reinterpretatation of the Sisters' naming, are posterior to his borrowing.

Coined by American evolutionary biologist Joseph Henrich and collaborators in 2010, referring to a bias among respondents and test subjects in psychology studies. Contrived acronym from weird.

Webster’s 1913

  1. noun Fate; destiny; one of the Fates, or Norns; also, a prediction.
  2. noun A spell or charm. [Obs. or Scot.] Sir W. Scott.
  3. adjective Of or pertaining to fate; concerned with destiny.
  4. adjective Of or pertaining to witchcraft; caused by, or suggesting, magical influence; supernatural; unearthly; wild; as, a weird appearance, look, sound, etc. Myself too had weird seizures. Tennyson.

Etymology [OE. wirde, werde, AS. wyrd fate, fortune, one of the Fates, fr. weor to be, to become; akin to OS. wurd fate, OHG. wurt, Icel. ur. Worth to become.]

Sources: Wiktionary · WordNet 3.0 · Webster’s 1913 — from the Wiktionary entry “weird”, CC BY-SA 4.0. Details