uncanny
adj/ʌnˈkæni/US
Etymology
From un- + canny; thus “beyond one's ken,” or outside one's familiar knowledge or perceptions. Compare Middle English unkanne (“unknown”). In the noun sense a translation of Sigmund Freud's usage of German unheimlich (Das Unheimliche, 1919).
- calqued from unheimlich
Definitions
Strange, and mysteriously unsettling (as if supernatural)
Strange, and mysteriously unsettling (as if supernatural); weird.
- He bore an uncanny resemblance to the dead sailor.
- An eerie feeling came over me. She seemed uncanny and fateful.
- These men had some uncanny knack of knowing when the steel was right, and like many such things, it just could not be put into a textbook on the subject.
Careless.
Something that is simultaneously familiar and strange, typically leading to feelings of…
Something that is simultaneously familiar and strange, typically leading to feelings of discomfort.
- This uncontrollable possibility—the possibility of a certain loss of control—can, perhaps, explain why the uncanny remains a marginal notion even within psychoanalysis itself.
- As is well known, Freud introduced the concept of the uncanny into psychoanalysis in 1919 and used The Sandman as a prime illustration for his definition.
- In the preceding chapter, we saw that Freud linked the maternal body, death, and the afterlife with the uncanny in his famous essay "The Uncanny" ("Das Unheimliche").
The neighborhood
Derived
Vish — recursive loop
No curated loop yet for uncanny. Loops are being traced one word at a time while the ingestion pipeline matures.
sense glosses and etymology drawn from English Wiktionary · source · CC-BY-SA