uncanny
adjective
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Uncanny describes that which unsettles us, such as disquieting observations, or mysterious situations and circumstances. Strip the word of its common negating prefix, though, and you’re left with canny, a word that shares semantic territory with clever and prudent. While canny and uncanny don’t appear to be antonyms, they both come from an early Scottish word canny meaning “free from risk; wise, prudent, cautious.” And in Scottish, canny has for centuries had a secondary meaning that correlates better to its mysterious cousin: the Oxford English Dictionary reports that the word is used in negative constructions to describe what is not safe to be involved with, or more broadly, what is not in accordance with what is right or natural. Rather uncanny.
Synonyms
Examples of uncanny in a Sentence
Bono, Time, 18 Apr. 2005
To an economist, the 1990s bear an uncanny resemblance to two earlier decades: the 1920s in the United States and the 1980s in Japan. In all three decades, technological change produced extraordinary economic growth, leading to talk of a "new era" and triggering a bull market in stocks that terminated in a market collapse—widely regarded as the bursting of a speculative bubble.
—Milton Friedman, Wall Street Journal, 22 Jan. 2002
As he approached quite close to the enclosure he saw an excited group surrounding the two fugitives, who, trembling with fright and exhaustion, were scarce able to recount the uncanny details of their adventure.
—Edgar Rice Burroughs, Tarzan of the Apes, 1914
She could not teach herself to think favourably of Pansy, whose absence of initiative, of conversation, of personal claims, seemed to her, in a girl of twenty, unnatural and even uncanny.
—Henry James, The Portrait of a Lady, 1881
She had an uncanny resemblance to someone I had seen before.
She has an uncanny sense of direction.
an uncanny ability to predict the weather
Al Shipley, SPIN, 1 Nov. 2024
There’s just something uncanny about the way the two of us work together.
—Gary Graff, Billboard, 31 Oct. 2024
Already, almost from the start, the biologists were changing from something human in the eyes of the locals into something uncanny.
—Jeff Vandermeer, WIRED, 22 Oct. 2024
How enraging that, even as an artist earns more wisdom and depth and artistry — begins to understand how to pull the uncanny powers of the beyond down into constant display on the earth — the body begins to lose its vital energy, and the cost of being alive begins to wear you down.
—Lauren Groff, New York Times, 17 Oct. 2024
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Cite this Entry
“Uncanny.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/uncanny. Accessed 16 Nov. 2024.
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uncanny
adjective
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