This week the government said that Boris Johnson’s chief adviser, Dominic Cummings, would not be able to bypass civil service recruitment processes in his drive, announced in a demented blogpost, to hire “weirdos and misfits” to work for him. But do “weirdos” really belong in No 10?
The term “weirdo” is first recorded only in 1955, as jazz slang for “a weird person”, which is perhaps also the origin of its recent reclamation (like “nerd”) as an admiring rather than abusive description. It had been possible, though, to call someone a “weirdie” or “weirdy” since the late 19th century. (Rather unfairly to pogonophiles, “weirdie” often went hand in hand with “beardy”.) “Weird” itself is the ancient term (“wyrd” in Old English) for destiny, and the modern adjectival use is credited to the “weird sisters”, or witches (also “weird women”) in Shakespeare’s Macbeth, though before that “weird sisters” could refer to the three Fates.
Etymologically speaking, then, a weirdo is someone with supernatural powers, a practitioner of witchcraft, capable of altering the future. Perhaps, after all, that is just what is needed in Downing Street for the UK’s exit from the EU to go as smoothly as promised.
• Steven Poole’s A Word for Every Day of the Year is published by Quercus.
