Gives Terry Pratchett's "Wyrd Sisters" a whole new layer of meaning. The man knew his language history, apparently.
Also interesting you can see the influences of Old English on German as well:
> Wyrd comes from the same root as the verb weorþan, pronounced roughly WEAR-than, which meant ‘to happen’ or ‘become’.
"werden" is literally "to become" in modern German. The connection to "wyrd" is a bit more tenuous, but "wird" does also mean "will (be)", so there might be some common root here.
That was a major theme of "Wyrd Sisters". The book itself was a parody of Shakespeare's Macbeth, which featured three "weird sisters" (actually "weyard sisters" and even "weyward sisters".)
As the OP article points out, Shakespeare based his sisters on the Fates of mythology - goddesses of destiny - known as "wyrd sisters". Pratchett was obviously aware of that connection, since the battle between fate and human choice is a core theme of the book.
All true - but if I understand the OP's article right, the whole emergence of the modern word "weird" came because in Shakespeare's time, the original root "wyrd" and meaning "fate" of the word were basically lost to history for most people. So contemporaries made up a new meaning "odd" when the word again got more popular through the play.
Pratchett hints at this by straight-up using the old spelling, that not even in the original Shakespeare play was used - and then of course plays with both meanings, as the witches are both deeply involved with fate, but also just strange in the modern sense.
Disclaimer though: Didn't read either Macbeth nor this Discworld book so far, soo ... this is just idle speculation.
Also interesting you can see the influences of Old English on German as well:
> Wyrd comes from the same root as the verb weorþan, pronounced roughly WEAR-than, which meant ‘to happen’ or ‘become’.
"werden" is literally "to become" in modern German. The connection to "wyrd" is a bit more tenuous, but "wird" does also mean "will (be)", so there might be some common root here.