wyrd
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See also: Wyrd
English
Etymology
Learned borrowing from Old English wyrd. Doublet of weird.
Pronunciation
- IPA(key): /wɪəd/, /wɝd/, /wiɚd/
- Homophones: word, Word
Noun
wyrd (countable and uncountable, plural wyrds)
- Fate, destiny, particularly in an Anglo-Saxon or Old Norse context.
- Synonyms: orlay, weird; see also Thesaurus:fate
- 1983, Brian Bates, The Way of Wyrd: Tales of an Anglo-Saxon Sorcerer, Century:
- Wyrd is too vast, too complex for us to comprehend, for we are ourselves part of wyrd and cannot stand back to observe it as if it were a separate force.
- 1992, Fred Alan Wolf, The eagle's quest: a physicist's search for truth in the heart of the shamanic world, Simon and Schuster, page 51:
- I had journeyed back to England as part of my research on this book to meet with two Englishmen who were practicing Anglo-Saxon shamans who had been researching and practicing the sounds and ways of wyrd.
- 2009, Margaret Weis, Tracy Hickman, Bones of the Dragon: Volume 1, Macmillan, page 78:
- His three sisters sat, beneath the tree, one twisting the wyrd on her distaff, one spinning the wyrd on her wheel, one weaving the wyrds of gods and men on her loom.
See also
Old English
Alternative forms
Etymology
From Proto-West Germanic *wurdi, from Proto-Germanic *wurdiz, from Proto-Indo-European *wr̥ti-, a verbal abstract from the root *wert- (“to turn”) .
Related to Latin vertere, the Old English verb weorþan (“to grow into, become”), Dutch worden, German werden. Cognate with Old Saxon wurd, Old High German wurt, Old Norse urðr (“fate”) (Old Norse Urðr (“one of 3 norns”)).
Pronunciation
Noun
wyrd f
- fate, destiny
- (in the plural) the Fates
- event, occurrence
- late 9th century, King Alfred's translation of Boethius' Metres of Boethius, lines 226-238
- Ne þearf lēoda nān wēnan þǣre wyrde, þæt weriġe flǣsc þæt mōd monna ǣniġes, eallunga tō him æfter mæġ onwendan; ac þā unþēawas ǣlces mōdes, and þ inġeþonc ǣlces monnes þone līchoman līt þider hit wille.
- Nor needs any man expect that event, that the vile flesh the mind of any man, Altogether to it should ever turn; but the vices of every mind, and the thought of every man, leads the body Whither it will.
- late 9th century, King Alfred's translation of Boethius' Metres of Boethius, lines 226-238
Declension
Strong i-stem:
| singular | plural | |
|---|---|---|
| nominative | wyrd | wyrde, wyrda |
| accusative | wyrd, wyrde | wyrde, wyrda |
| genitive | wyrde | wyrda |
| dative | wyrde | wyrdum |