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The Stop
Generally taken to mean ‘very strange and unusual, unexpected, or not natural’, the adjective ‘weird’ has recently reentered mainstream usage through its appearance in current American politics. It’s a great word - not only because using it points out something in an opponent that’s odd - but because it infers this oddness is at another level. To call someone ‘weird’ is to point out that on any normal scale, they’re disturbingly … wrong.1
Originating from the Proto-Indo-European word wert, meaning ‘to turn’ or ‘wind’, the current meaning of weird is derived from wert’s dual relationship to the Old English words weorðan, meaning ‘to become’, and wyrd, meaning ‘fate, chance’ or ‘fortune’. Though used as late as the early 15th century to reference something or someone ‘having power to control fate’, by the 16th century the word had become obsolete in English, surviving only in Middle Scots.2
Shakespeare borrowed the word in the early 17th century and used it in his play Macbeth. By naming the Three Witches the ‘Weird Sisters’, he not only reintroduced the word to English, but provided the context from which its modern sense of ‘abnormal’ or ‘strange’ arose. Through their charms and incantations, the Witches control the fate of Macbeth and the circumstances which lead to his and many others’ deaths and downfalls. When combined with a tendency (especially in the 18th and 19th centuries) to portray the characters as having odd or frightening appearances, by the early 19th century the two connotations had combined. By 1815 ‘weird’ had acquired its adjectival meaning of ‘odd-looking’ or ‘uncanny’, and within five years this this meaning had intensified to mean something ‘odd, strange, disturbingly different’.
It’s this meaning of ‘weird’ - that something weird is deeply wrong - in usage today.
The Detour
Today’s Detour is to Most Dangerous Elements on the Periodic Table, a short (4:38) animated TED-Ed investigation into exactly what it says in the title. Some of the elements are toxic, others explode and some emit radiation. All are amazing.
6 Most Dangerous Elements (TED-Ed)
The Recommendation
Today’s Recommendation is A. J. Jacobs’s The Year of Living Constitutionally (2024).3 Subtitled One Man’s Humble Quest to Follow the Constitution’s Original Meaning, Jacobs sets out to attempt to live as close as he can to an originalist interpretation of the US Constitution. It’s a thoroughly enjoyable book which reveals the very different mindset of the people who wrote the document and shows that it’s essentially foolish to think decisions made in the late 18th century are necessarily applicable - or even relevant - to people living in the 21st.
From the inside flap: A. J. Jacobs learned the hard way that donning a tricorne hat and marching around Manhattan with a 1700s musket will earn you a lot of strange looks. In the wake of several controversial rulings by the Supreme Court and the ongoing debate about how the Constitution should be interpreted, Jacobs set out to understand what it means to live by the Constitution.
In The Year of Living Constitutionally, A. J. Jacobs tries to get inside the minds of the Founding Fathers by living as closely as possible to the original meaning of the Constitution. He asserts his right to free speech by writing his opinions on parchment with a quill and handing them out to strangers in Times Square. He consents to quartering a soldier, as is his Third Amendment right. He turns his home into a traditional 1790s household by lighting candles instead of using electricity, boiling mutton, and - because married women were not allowed to sign contracts - feebly attempting to take over his wife’s day job, which involves a lot of contract negotiations.
The book blends unforgettable adventures - traveling to the Capitol to personally deliver a handwritten petition to Congress, applying for a Letter of Marque to become a legal pirate for the government, and battling redcoats as part of a Revolutionary War reenactment group - with dozens of interviews from constitutional experts from both sides of the debate. Jacobs dives deep into originalism and living constitutionalism, the two rival ways of interpreting the document.
Much like he did with the Bible in The Year of Living Biblically, Jacobs provides a crash course on our Constitution as he experiences the benefits and peril of living like it’s the 1790s. He relishes, for instance, the slow thinking of the era, free from social media alerts. But he also discovers the progress we’ve made since 1789 when, for instance, life expectancy was forty-five years and married women couldn’t own property.
Now more than ever, Americans need to understand the meaning and value of the Constitution. As politicians and Supreme Court justices wage a high-stakes battle over how literally we should interpret the Constitution, A. J. Jacobs provides an entertaining and illuminating look into how this storied document fits into our democracy today.
The Sounds
Today’s playlist is a collection of five excellent tracks, all of which include the subject of today’s brief Stop in both title and sentiment: ‘Is She Weird’ (Pixies, 1990), ‘Weird Fishes/Arpeggi’ (Radiohead, 2007), ‘Weird Goodbyes’ (The National feat. Bon Inver, 2023), ‘Weird Dreams’ (Gaz Coombes, 2018) and ‘So Weird’ (Veruca Salt, 2006). Enjoy!
The Thought
Today’s Thought is from the Canadian-American scientific skeptic who spent a career challenging the paranormal and pseudoscientific, James Randi:4
‘Those who believe without reason cannot be convinced by reason.’
If you have a thought on this Thought - or any part of today’s issue - please leave a comment below:
And that’s the end of this Stop - I hope you enjoyed the diversion!
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Until the next Stop …
Sources for today’s Stop include: Weird, Weird (Etymonline)
Word obsoletion is remarkably common; there are thousands upon thousands of English words that are no longer in common usage - or even extinct. When’s the last time you were in a laboratory investigating animacules while wishing you were outdoors appreciating the apricity?
My brother gave me this book as an early birthday gift, and I just read it over the last couple of days. I haven’t read any of Jacobs’s other books, but on the strength of this one I will. It’s a timely, interesting - and often funny - send up of those who’d like to return the country to a ‘better time’. Which, in fact, didn’t exist in the first place.
For more about Randi, see: James Randi
'I know it sounds weird, then she appeared.' That was the song lyric that immediately came to mind after reading your note. Note to that Partridge of course 'weirds out' the recording of his voice for that one word while singing it. 'All Edward Leared' too is, well, weird.... but also apt. But using it as a descriptor for one's current political opponents, is a deliberate soft-pedal designed to avoid alienating potential swing voters. In fact, the players are not so much weird as downright dangerous. The eccentric, even eldritch connotations that the term weird invokes are far too gothic to be relevant to a coming political reality in which another holocaust is plausible. - GVL