Uncanny

Adjective

 * 1) strange, and mysteriously unsettling (as if supernatural); weird
 * He bore an uncanny resemblance to the dead sailor.
 * 1) The Uncanny is a Freudian concept of an instance where something can be familiar, yet foreign at the same time, often being uncomfortably strange . 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'".

Adverbs for Uncanny
alarmingly; peculiarly; weirdly; curiously; strangely; inexplicably; unaccountably; harrowingly; oppressively;  mysteriously; viciously; vaguely; unreasonably; haunt-ingly; gloomily; indefinably; obscurely; inescapably; absurdly; inscrutably; eerily.

Thesaurus
awe-inspiring, awesome, awful, awing, bizarre, blue, cadaverous, corpselike, creepy, deadly, deathlike, deathly, deathly pale, eerie, eldritch, ghastly, ghostlike, ghostly, grisly, gruesome, haggard, livid, lurid, macabre, mortuary, mysterious, numinous, pale, spookish, spooky, superhuman, supernormal, unco, uncolike, unearthly, unnatural, wan, weird

Etymology
un- and canny

Canny is from the Anglo-Saxon root ken: “knowledge, understanding, or cognizance; mental perception: an idea beyond one's ken.”[2] Thus the uncanny is something outside one's familiar knowledge or perceptions.

Translations

 * Czech:, ,  ,  ,  ,
 * Finnish: ,
 * French: ,


 * German:
 * Icelandic:, , ,
 * Romanian:


 * Italian:


 * Spanish:

Related terms

 * canny

Derived terms

 * uncanny valley
 * uncannily