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Wyrd is a concept in Anglo-Saxon culture roughly corresponding to fate or personal destiny. Their concept of fate, ''wyrd'', was stronger than that of the Classical Pagans as there was no resisting it. The word is ancestral to Modern English ''weird'', which retains its original meaning only dialectically. The cognate term in Old Norse is ''urðr'', with a similar meaning, but also personalized as one of the Norns, Urðr (anglicized as ''Urd'') and appearing in the name of the holy well Urðarbrunnr in Norse mythology. ==Etymology== The Old English term ''wyrd'' derives from a Common Germanic term '' *wurđíz''.〔Karsten, Gustaf E. ''Germanic Philology'', University of Illinois Press, 1908, p. 12.〕 ''Wyrd'' has cognates in Old Saxon ''wurd'', Old High German ''wurt'', Old Norse ''urðr'', Dutch ''worden'' (to become), and German ''werden''. The Proto-Indo-European root is '' *wert-'' "to turn, rotate", in Common Germanic '' *wirþ-'' with a meaning "to come to pass, to become, to be due" (also in ''weorþ'', the notion of "origin" or "worth" both in the sense of "connotation, price, value" and "affiliation, identity, esteem, honour and dignity.) Old English ''wyrd'' is a verbal noun formed from the verb ''weorþan'', meaning "to come to pass, to become". The term developed into the modern English adjective ''weird''. Adjectival use develops in the 15th century, in the sense "having the power to control fate", originally in the name of the ''Weird Sisters'', i.e. the classical Fates, in the Elizabethan period detached from their classical background as ''fays'', and most notably appearing as the Three Witches in Shakespeare's ''Macbeth''.〔Karsten, Gustaf E. ''Germanic Philology'', University of Illinois Press, 1908, p. 12.〕 In many editions of the play, the editors include a footnote associating the "Weird Sisters" with Old English ''wyrd'' or "fate".〔de Grazia, Margreta and Stallybrass, Peter. ''The Materiality of the Shakespearean Text'', George Washington University, 1993, p. 263.〕 From the 14th century, ''to weird'' was also used as a verb in Scots, in the sense of "to preordain by decree of fate". Of note is the use of "weird" in Frank Herbert's Dune to connote an ability to amplify or empower, e.g., certain words being used as "weirding words." The modern spelling ''weird'' first appears in Scottish and Northern English dialects in the 16th century and is taken up in standard literary English from the 17th century. The regular modern English form would have been ''wird'', from Early Modern English ''werd''. The substitution of ''werd'' by ''weird'' in the northern dialects is "difficult to account for".〔OED. c.f. phonological history of Scots.〕 The now most common meaning of ''weird'', "odd, strange", is first attested in 1815, originally with a connotation of the supernatural or portentuous (especially in the collocation ''weird and wonderful''), but by the early 20th century increasingly applied to everyday situations.〔OED; c.f. Barnhart, Robert K. ''The Barnhart Concise Dictionary of Etymology''. Harper Collins ISBN 0-06-270084-7 (1995:876).〕 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「wyrd」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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