Weird vs Idiosyncratic - What's the difference?
weird | idiosyncratic | Related terms |
Connected with fate or destiny; able to influence fate.
Of or pertaining to witches or witchcraft; supernatural; unearthly; suggestive of witches, witchcraft, or unearthliness; wild; uncanny.
* Longfellow
* Shakespeare, Macbeth , Act 1 Scene 5
Having supernatural or preternatural power.
Having an unusually strange character or behaviour.
Deviating from the normal; bizarre.
(archaic) Of or pertaining to the Fates.
(archaic) Fate; destiny; luck.
* 1912 , , trans. Arthur S. Way (Heinemenn 1946, p. 361)
A prediction.
(obsolete, Scotland) A spell or charm.
That which comes to pass; a fact.
(archaic, in the plural) The Fates (personified).
To destine; doom; change by witchcraft or sorcery.
To warn solemnly; adjure.
See weird out .
Peculiar to a specific individual; eccentric.
* 1886 , (Robert Louis Stevenson), Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde , ch. 9:
* 1891 , (George MacDonald), The Flight of the Shadow , ch. 12:
* 1982 , Michael Walsh, "
As adjectives the difference between weird and idiosyncratic
is that weird is connected with fate or destiny; able to influence fate while idiosyncratic is peculiar to a specific individual; eccentric.As a noun weird
is fate; destiny; luck.As a verb weird
is to destine; doom; change by witchcraft or sorcery.weird
English
Alternative forms
* (l) (obsolete)Adjective
(er)- Those sweet, low tones, that seemed like a weird incantation.
- Whiles I stood rapt in the wonder of it, came missives from the king, who all-hailed me, 'Thane of Cawdor'; by which title, before, these weird sisters saluted me, and referred me to the coming on of time, with 'Hail, king that shalt be!'
- There was a weird light shining above the hill.
- There are lots of weird people in this place.
- It was quite weird to bump into all my ex-girlfriends on the same day.
Usage notes
* Weird is one of the most noted exceptions to the (I before E except after C) spelling heuristic.Synonyms
* (having supernatural or preternatural power) eerie, uncanny * (unusually strange in character or behaviour) fremd, oddball, peculiar, whacko * (deviating from the normal) bizarre, fremd, odd, out of the ordinary, strange * (of or pertaining to the Fates) fateful * See alsoDerived terms
* weirdo * weirdly * weirdness * weird outNoun
(en noun)- In the weird of death shall the hapless be whelmed, and from Doom’s dark prison / Shall she steal forth never again.
- (Sir Walter Scott)
Synonyms
* (l)Derived terms
* * weirdlessVerb
(en verb)- That joke really weirded me out.
Anagrams
* * * English words not following the I before E except after C rule ----idiosyncratic
English
Adjective
(en adjective)- At the time, I set it down to some idiosyncratic , personal distaste . . . but I have since had reason to believe the cause to lie much deeper in the nature of man.
- It was no merely idiosyncratic experience, for the youth had the same: it was love!
Music: A Fresh Falstaff in Los Angeles," Time , 26 April:
- British Director Ronald Eyre kept the action crisp; he was correctly content to execute the composer's wishes, rather than impose a fashionably idiosyncratic view of his own.