uncanny

Meanings

1. 1
   adj

   Strange, and mysteriously unsettling (as if supernatural); weird.

   He bore an uncanny resemblance to the dead sailor.

2. 2
   noun

   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.

3. 3
   adj

   suggesting the operation of supernatural influences

4. 4
   adj

   surpassing the ordinary or normal

5. 5
   adj

   Careless.

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).