Wyrd: The Old Word That Means So Much More Than Weird
Fate, becoming, and the wonderfully strange history of a very old word
Every once in a while I come across a word that sends me straight down a rabbit hole.
Wyrd is one of those words.
It looks like weird. It sounds a little witchy. It feels like something you’d find scribbled in the back of an old book next to a moon and a raven.
Naturally, I needed to know more.
And it turns out we’ve been using a descendant of this word forever without realizing how much meaning got lost along the way.
Before Weird Was Weird
Wyrd is an Old English word, usually connected to fate, destiny, or what comes to pass. It comes from the same family of words as the Old English verb weorþan, meaning to become or to happen.
And that’s the part I love.
Wyrd wasn’t originally about being strange.
It was about becoming.
It carried this idea that life is unfolding around us, shaped by what has already happened while still moving toward what comes next. It’s fate, but not necessarily in the fortune-cookie sense of everything being predetermined and there’s nothing you can do about it.
It feels more alive than that.
More like life is constantly becoming.
Which, if we’re being honest, is exactly what life does whether we’re ready for it or not.
Then Shakespeare Got Involved
So how the hell did a word connected to fate become the word we now use when somebody is acting strange?
Enter Shakespeare.
In Macbeth, Shakespeare famously gave us the “Weird Sisters,” the three mysterious women who tell Macbeth what his future may hold.
“Weird” there wasn’t originally supposed to mean that these ladies were odd.
They were connected to wyrd—fate.
Basically, they were the Sisters of Fate.
Over time, because these women were supernatural, mysterious and admittedly pretty creepy, the meaning of weird began shifting. It became associated with the uncanny and supernatural, and eventually with anything unusual or strange.
So somewhere along the way we went from fate and becoming to telling our kids, “Stop being weird.”
Language is wild.
The Web We Live In
Wyrd also shows up in old Germanic ideas about fate, and modern writers sometimes describe it like a web: everything connected to everything else, with the past affecting the present and the choices we make now becoming part of what happens next.
I like that much better than the idea that we’re just passengers and fate has already written the whole damn thing.
Maybe life is some combination of what we’re handed and what we do with it.
The people we meet change us. The choices we make change what comes next. Things happen that we never asked for, and somehow those things become woven into the person we’re becoming.
Some threads we choose.
Some we absolutely do not.
But somehow they all end up in the same tapestry.
Wyrd Feels Very Divine Grit
The more I learned about this little word, the more I realized why I liked it so much.
Divine Grit has always lived somewhere between faith and fight.
Trusting that there may be something bigger happening while also understanding that we’re responsible for what we do with the life in front of us.
Wyrd lives somewhere around there too.
It’s fate, but it’s also becoming.
It’s what happened.
What’s happening.
And what might happen next.
There’s something comforting about that to me because it means the chapter you’re standing in isn’t the entire story.
You’re still becoming.
Your life is still unfolding.
The thread is still moving.
And maybe that’s why an Old English word from more than a thousand years ago still feels strangely relevant.
Or should I say…
wyrd.
Guided by something higher. Built through something harder.
— Lara