Macbeth, Shakespeare’s shortest play, opens with very unusual characters talking about meeting with Macbeth as if they knew that they eventually would. The three of them are called the Weird Sisters. Initially, the word “weird” was a noun essentially meaning “fate”, then written “wyrd”. It was also used to refer to the Parcae (latin), three women representing destiny itself. Shakespeare thus used a mixture of both definitions that were used at the time to create those powerful witches who can control fate and who could thereby determine the whole play’s plot.
Where are we even going with this ? Well, it’s pretty straightforward and a bit power-to-the-people-esque—please make this a real word—since it naturally evolved into its modern meaning over the years after Macbeth was first performed. We can’t know for sure that Shakespeare is the only reason for the word’s evolution, but it would make sense that upon seeing that the “Weird Sisters” looked odd or out of the ordinary—or upon reading the script first published in 1623—people who hadn’t heard of the adjective before would assume its meaning to be that of the sisters’ appearance and supernatural abilities.
I dreamt last night of the three weird sisters:
— Shakespeare, Macbeth
To you they have show’d some truth.
And here we are, in the twenty first century, using the word “weird” exaggeratedly often without it being linked to fate in the slightest.
Weird, huh ?
— Jérémy Lefebvre
Sources:
“Macbeth”, play by Shakespeare (1623)
Merriam-Webster’s definition of “weird”: https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/weird
“Parcae”, Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parcae
Peas and Jelly 
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