Definitions
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
- adj. Peculiarly unsettling, as if of supernatural origin or nature; eerie. See Synonyms at weird.
- adj. So keen and perceptive as to seem preternatural.
Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia
- Not canny, in any sense.
- Eery; weird; mysterious; apparently not of this world; hence, noting one supposed to possess preternatural powers.
- Severe, as a fall or blow.
Wiktionary
- adj. strange, and mysteriously unsettling (as if supernatural); weird
- adj. The Uncanny is a Freudian concept of an instance where something can be familiar, yet foreign at the same time, often being uncomfortably strange http://www-rohan.sdsu.edu/~amtower/uncanny.html. Freud describes the uncanny in his work as analogous to the German Unheimliche or unhomely. The uncanny is "something that was long familiar to the psyche and was estranged from it only through being repressed. The link with repression now illuminates Schelling's definition of the uncanny's 'something that should have remained hidden and has come into open'" http://books.google.com/books?vid=ISBN0142437476&id=zqafz8HKpC4C&pg=PP1&lpg=PP1&ots=3pn2paWVXr&dq=freud+uncanny&sig=uGxiPlQX-o48t2nGY-NyxdDgJMU#PPA148,M1.
GNU Webster's 1913
- adj. Not canny; unsafe; strange; weird; ghostly.
WordNet 3.0
- adj. suggesting the operation of supernatural influences
- adj. surpassing the ordinary or normal
Etymologies
- un-1 + canny, fortunate, safe (obsolete).
Examples
“The Polar Express, even before the term uncanny valley was coined in 1970, Disney was giving us the willies with lifelike machines.”
“And Roboticist Masahiro Mori used the term uncanny valley to describe the disconcerting reaction people had to robots as they became more human-like in their appearance.”
“In fact, in so far as the uncanny is also a signifier to which a real world referent can be attached we might be even more dubious.”
“And in so far as the uncanny is a signifier to which a real world referent can be attached -- the bestial amorality at the heart of human nature, the id unbound -- we might be equally dubious of the acts of validation carried out in the revelations of Horror.”
“FREED: It's not clear why the mismatch happened, but in trying to explain it, the coroner pointed to what he called the uncanny resemblance between the women, including body type, hair color and facial features.”
“This interest in common things was gratifying to Aunt Charlotte, who distrusted and discouraged his dwelling on what she called the uncanny side of life; but she was anxious, at the same time, that he should not overtax his strength, and gave secret orders to Lubin to see that the young master did not allow his ardour to outrun the dictates of discretion.”
“The thing was not quite what we call uncanny; the people were so honest, both of them, that the morbid character of like situations was wanting.”
“In our lit-crit terminology, this unsettling aspect of the "uncanny" is the implicity of a boulomaic modality of "should not have happened".”
“I did not know the story of "St. Christopher the Dog-Head" or Ratramnus 'reply to Rimbert when I wrote the original "Eifelheim," lo these many years ago; but there is a certain uncanny similarity in the stories.”
“And an excerpt from the Faren Miller review says: The situation seems less grim than exciting to a pair of girls who barely manage to hide their lesbianism, their anti-government sentiments, and certain uncanny capabilities (for whatever the leaders wish to think, whatever the laws decree, magic does exist here).”
Lists
These user-created lists contain the word ‘uncanny’.
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The weird, the wonderful and the plain hilarious
Loved for their ingenuity, an exact description, or simply for the pure joy of it.
acidulous, aprosdoketon, higgledy-piggledy, lexicographical, ninja, audacious, somnabulist, shivaree, amorphous, quidnunc, glib, melancholy and 353 more...
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Mentally irregular
Words for the mentally irregular
bonkers, unhinged, batshit crazy, cognitive dissonance, apophenia, undone, loony, unsound, deranged, a bit off the beam, daft, stark ravin' mad and 19 more...
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carolinacc's list
jettisoned, yearn, chrestomathy, catachresis, elation, gesundheit, ohne, tertium quid, iota, oscillation, argillous, flagrate and 67 more...
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Literary critical terms
cathexis, catachresis, polyvocal, alterity, liminality, liminal, limn, erasure, metonymic, intertextual, intrapoetic, contradistinction and 66 more...
PossibleUnderscore “A kind of cross between Helen Traubel and Martha Raye an uncanny amalgam of Joan Sutherland and Phyllis Diller.�?
-James McCourt
Jul 29, 2009
maesepedro especially pleasing in the context of this list since uncanny doesn't seem to have much to do with canny Feb 13, 2008