I get along with most words; some better than others, of course, and some hardly at all, but I get along with most.  And one word I am at war with.  I have exiled it from my vocabulary and if I had it in my power I would ban it from everyone else's.  Every time it pops its ugly head up in a conversation (even one I'm just walking past) I get the urge to smash it.  It's the word "weird."

Weird.  The American Heritage Dictionary defines it as an adjective meaning "of an odd and inexplicable character; unusual; strange; fantastic."  As long as it means that, and nothing more, I have no quarrel with it.  There is an honest use of the word.  In the movie "Alice's Restaurant," Arlo Guthrie leans against a window in a hospital room and says (about war and the draft, I think), "It's weird, man."  Meaning:  it doesn't make sense.  Used that way, the word is legitimate.

But it is not usually used that way.  It is usually used as a sort of ultimate comment on something, given offhandedly to reduce that something to manageability.  "He's weird."  "That music is weird."  "The book?  It was weird."  Used that way, it means, first of all, of course, that the thing in question is unusual, different.  But it goes beyond that.  It also means that because that thing is different, it is somehow suspect, somehow inferior.

There are two ways of approaching something new, two ways of preparing to react:  "Ah, an adventure!" or "I don't think I'm going to like this."  Whatever the expectations, they are likely to be fulfilled.  "Wow, that's far out!" or "That's weird."  There's a world of difference.

Weird.  Meaning:  it doesn't fit into what I see as the norm, so I assume that it is not only outside those norms but also somehow below them, not just different but abnormal as well.  And it is not the nature of the difference which makes that which is different suspect, but simply the fact that there is a difference.

Now if I say all that (That is different; I don't like things that are different; I don't like that.) I sound, perish the thought, narrow-minded.  But I don't have to say it.  I can turn those awkward jumps into one smooth leap by saying, "It's weird."  And if whoever I'm talking to has the same set of norms that I do (and he always does, of course), he'll say, "Yeah, weird," and we can turn the conversation to maybe the weather or something, having easily dismissed another challenge to our complacency.