uncanny

Meanings

1. 1
   adj

   Strange and mysterious in a way that is hard to explain and slightly unsettling.

   He bore an uncanny resemblance to a man I had met years before.

2. 2
   adj

   Far beyond what is normal or expected, in an almost supernatural way.

   She has an uncanny ability to guess what people are thinking.

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).

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