uncanny meaning: definition, etymology and quotations

uncanny

adj

US /ʌnˈkæni/

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).

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

He bore an uncanny resemblance to the dead sailor.
An eerie feeling came over me. She seemed uncanny and fateful.1899 February, Joseph Conrad, “The Heart of Darkness”, in Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine, volume CLXV, number M, New York, N.Y.: The Leonard Scott Publishing Company, […], →OCLC, part I, page 200:

2 more examples

These men had some uncanny knack of knowing when the steel was right, and like many such things, it just could not be put into a textbook on the subject.1945 January and February, A Former Pupil, “Some memories of Crewe Works—III”, in Railway Magazine, page 14:
The new iPhone promises “next level” photography with push-button ease. But the results look odd and uncanny.2022 March 18, Kyle Chayka, “Have iPhone Cameras Become Too Smart?”, in The New Yorker:

UK, Dialectal Careless.

Derived terms: uncanny valley, uncannily, uncanniness

uncanny

noun

Human sciences, Medicine, Psychoanalysis, Psychology, Sciences 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.1982, Samuel Weber, The Legend of Freud, page 20:
As is well known, Freud introduced the concept of the uncanny into psychoanalysis in 1919 and used The Sandman as a prime illustration for his definition.1994, Sonu Shamdasani, Michael Münchow, Speculations after Freud, page 186:

4 more examples

In the preceding chapter, we saw that Freud linked the maternal body, death, and the afterlife with the uncanny in his famous essay "The Uncanny" ("Das Unheimliche").2001, Diane Jonte-Pace, Speaking the Unspeakable, page 81:
The uncanny involves feelings of uncertainty, in particular regarding the reality of who one is and what is being experienced.2003, Nicholas Royle, The Uncanny, page 1:
Freud argued that the uncanny was particularly associated with feelings of horror aroused by the figure of the paternal castrator, neglecting the tropes of woman and animal as a source of the uncanny.2005, Barbara Creed, Phallic Panic, page vii:
[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 as ‘something that should have remained hidden and has come into the open.’ (Freud: 2003, 147 f)2011, Espen Dahl, Hans-Gunter Heimbrock, In Between: The Holy Beyond Modern Dichotomies, page 99: