Weird

Weird. Like my taste in men? Klingons, ogres, zombies...weird is one way of putting it. Heh. Let's move on. So weird, from the old english word 'wyrd' orginally meant something akin to fate or destiny. As etymonline puts it, that changed.

The modern sense of weird developed from M.E. use of weird sisters for the three fates or Norns (in Germanic mythology), the goddesses who controlled human destiny. They were usually portrayed as odd or frightening in appearance, as in "Macbeth," which led to the adj. meaning "odd-looking, uncanny," first recorded 1815.

Yay! Proper mythological roots! I love finding these...Norse mythology isn't one that I've really explored too much. A quick search on Norns reveals all sorts of interesting snippets about them. One of them Uror, seems to have actually been called Wyrd.

How the meaning of a word can change from 'destiny' to 'strange', simply because of how someone's eyes perceived a mythical character- that's really something.