The sense of "uncanny, supernatural" developed from Middle English use of weird sisters for the three Fates or Norns (in Germanic mythology), the goddesses who controlled human destiny.
The first attestations of the word “weird” date back to 1400 but its original meaning was that of “having the power to control or influence the fate”.
nonconformist, screwball (slang, US, Canadian), odd fish (informal), kook (US, Canadian, informal), queer fish (British, informal)
Lunatic was commonly used from the 16th to the 18th centuries in England. It was derived from the Roman moon goddess luna. The moon was believed to lead to mental instability in ancient Rome. Although it is similar to madness, it originally meant cyclical insanity rather than chronic insanity.
Wyrd is a concept in Anglo-Saxon culture roughly corresponding to fate or personal destiny. The word is ancestral to Modern English weird, whose meaning has drifted towards an adjectival use with a more general sense of "supernatural" or "uncanny", or simply "unexpected".
In Shakespeare's day, to say something was weird, meant that it had the supernatural power to cause something to happen, or to know that something will happen.
/ˈwɪrdəʊz/ ) (informal, disapproving) a person who looks strange and/or behaves in a strange way.
If you describe someone as a weirdo, you disapprove of them because they behave in an unusual way which you find difficult to understand or accept.
The word comes from the Anglo-Saxon word for fate. Weird in this context means controlling human destiny and was spelled 'wyrd'. Whether or not Macbeth has the ability to shape his own destiny is a constant theme in the play, and the Witches are a symbol of this.
Unruly waywardness. It wasn't just soured romance that was believed to cause madness in Shakespeare's England. A person could lose their reason through mischance or trauma, overwork or excessive intellectual stimulation, shock or religious torment.
Think of baloney, balderdash, piffle, gobbledegook, gibberish, poppycock, flapdoodle, twaddle, tommyrot, hogwash, hooey, and a load of old cobblers.
Xenos (from Ancient Greek ξένος (xénos); PL xenoi) is a word used in the Greek language from Homer onwards.
The adjective strange comes from Latin word extraneus, meaning “foreign” or “external.” If someone approaches you speaking with a strange accent, it means you can't identify where the person is from, not that he or she is odd or weird — the newer meaning of strange.
Tommy-rot
Tommy-rot was ultimately rotten bread, and, in the sense of something utterly worthless or spoiled beyond use, eventually came to mean “nonsense” in Victorian slang.
barmy. Barmy means “crazy; foolish; eccentric.” It's thought to be an alteration of the word balmy, meaning “foolish.” This sense was first recorded in the 1800s and has an interesting history.
Lunatic/lunatick. Early term to describe broadly the term mentally ill used today.
Kooky: (especially of a person) strange in their appearance or behaviour, especially in a way that is interesting: I think this is a 'cute' way of describing someones unusual habits or demeanour, in an endearing way.
Some common synonyms of silly are asinine, fatuous, foolish, and simple.
Rhinotillexomaniac, phaneromaniac, planomaniac, oh my! Mania is defined as “excessive excitement or enthusiasm,” but it can also be considered a psychiatric disorder.
O'Brien (1996) highlights that, according to Elizabethan physical psychology, extreme passion destroys the higher faculties and that, if not corrected (the disordering caused) could lead to madness and to death. Indeed, Elizabethan Parish records often list, as causes of death, mental states like 'frenzy' or 'thought'.
He concluded that Hamlet suffered from rapid cycling bipolar disorder, and he retrieved from the text exact quotes that met DSM criteria and substantiated his view that Hamlet was insane. The jury, which included Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, found Hamlet sane.