Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • adjective So unusual as to be surprising; uncanny.
  • noun An unusual or amazing person.
  • noun A stranger.
  • noun News.
  • adverb To an excessive degree; remarkably.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • Wonderfully; remarkably; very: as, unco glad; unco guid.
  • Unknown; strange; unusual. (Child's Ballads, II. 342).
  • noun Anything strange or prodigious.
  • noun A strange person; a stranger.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • adjective Scot. Unknown; strange, or foreign; unusual, or surprising; distant in manner; reserved.
  • adverb Prov. Eng. & Scot. In a high degree; to a great extent; greatly; very.
  • noun Scot. A strange thing or person.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • adjective slang, New Zealand, Australia Uncoordinated.
  • adjective Strange, weird.
  • adverb Scotland Very.

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • adverb to a remarkable degree or extent

Etymologies

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

[Middle English unkow, variant of uncouth, strange; see uncouth.]

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

From uncoordinated.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

From Scots unco, shortening of uncouth.

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Examples

Comments

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  • Sense is usually negative. Burns' poem 'Address to the Unco Guid' is an attack on the rigidly righteous.

    December 28, 2007

  • Uncoordinated.

    October 5, 2008

  • At night when the campfire has sunk low,

    Then kids hone their skills spinning bunco.

    They fill their friends’ ears

    With engineered fears,

    Weaving tales of the weird and the unco.

    April 8, 2014