Word: weirdness
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...difference between the two starts with the words themselves: eccentric, after all, carries a distinguished Latin pedigree that refers, quite reasonably, to anything that departs from the center; weird, by comparison, has its mongrel origins in the Old English wyrd, meaning fate or destiny; and the larger, darker forces conjured up by the term -- Macbeth's weird sisters and the like -- are given an extra twist with the slangy, bastard suffix -o. Beneath the linguistic roots, however, we feel the difference on our pulses. The eccentric we generally regard as something of a donny, dotty, harmless type, like the British...
...people were laughing," said Mark C. Foley '89, who was studying on the second floor. "It was kind of quiet, it was weird sitting in the dark all alone," he said. He was on his way to Cabot Library to finish his night's work...
...During the Tet offensive in Saigon, the police chief's arm in profile that draws a straight line through his trigger finger and by the leap of the bullet into the fear-rigid Viet Cong's brain: a crisp extinction. The weird surprise of death, the pop into non-being. In the TV version, the man falls like a short tree and his head pours neat but urgent blood upon the street, as from a vial...
Robin Williams is a movie misfit. As the decade's reigning comic soloist, master of the improvised trip through his own weird inner space, he generally arrives onscreen bearing the burden of our heightened hopes for a divine madness. Up to now, his genius has not fit any known film format. Narrative obligations and the implicit demand that leading characters be sane, likable and consistent have always constrained...
...weird forms of art have a strong bent...