Word.ws English Dictionary

How to use uncanny in a sentence

38 example sentences · adjective, noun

Uncanny means strange, and mysteriously unsettling (as if supernatural); weird. Example: “He bore an uncanny resemblance to the dead sailor.”

Examples of uncanny by meaning

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

  • He bore an uncanny resemblance to the dead sailor.
  • 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
  • But the results look odd and uncanny.2022 March 18, Kyle Chayka, “Have iPhone Cameras Become Too Smart?”, in The New Yorker

nounSomething 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
  • 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

More sentences with uncanny

  • She has an uncanny ability to defuse conflict.From the entry ability
  • It gives me a similar uncanny feeling to drinking water out of the straw.2024 January 25, Heather Schwedel, “I Spent a Week Parading My Coveted Stanley Cup Around New York City”, in Slate, New York, N.Y.: The…. From the entry Pavlovianly
  • Not only were his eyes averted from mine, but they were glassed to an uncanny degree.2018, Harry Leon Wilson, Ruggles of Red Gap, →ISBN, page 199. From the entry glass
  • Autistic people are indeed often systemizers; many have uncanny technical abilities.2013, Andrew Solomon, Far From the Tree: Parents, Children and the Search for Identity. From the entry systemizer
  • He had the uncanny ability to demolish his opponents with ease and make mincemeat out of them.2007, Harry Lawson, Varghese Kattooparambil, Tom of Twofold Bay, →ISBN, page 21. From the entry make mincemeat out of
  • This notion also associates the vampire more directly with the primal uncanny.2005, Barbara Creed, Phallic Panic: Film, Horror and the Primal Uncanny, Melbourne Univ. Publishing, →ISBN, page 86. From the entry vagina dentata
  • But he also has the uncanny ability to sense where the puck is heading.1991, David W. Conklin, Lucie Deschênes, Canada's Information Revolution, page 45. From the entry where the puck is heading
  • "The Germans," he remarked, "have the uncanny ability to snatch defeat out of the jaws of victory."1942, United States. Army. Chemical Warfare Service, News Letter, page 3. From the entry snatch defeat out of the jaws of victory
  • His uncanny aptitude for math showed itself early.2015, Steve Silberman, chapter 1, in Megan Newman, editor, NeuroTribes: The Legacy of Autism and the Future of Neurodiversity, New York…. From the entry hurly-burly
  • Through the fog she could see hulking shapes that shambled along the uncanny roadway, dark shadows against the crimson radiance.2014, Karl Edward Wagner, Bloodstone. From the entry pulsant
  • Levine achieved an uncanny balance between timelessness and subdued intensity.2007 January 16, Anthony Tommasini, “Serious German Violinist Gets a Rock Star Ovation”, in The New York Times. From the entry timelessness
  • Even an uncanny supra-natural sense of natural impendings, catastrophe, earthquake and flood, lacking in man, is found in simpler creatures.1934, Arabella Kenealy, The Human Gyroscope. From the entry impending
  • The other, dwarfed and prehensile, might in its uncanny silhouette have been an imp of darkness from the nether regions.1921, William MacLeod Raine, Gunsight Pass, ch. 1. From the entry nether region
  • The conversational tone is almost uncanny.2025 August 28, John McWhorter, “The Single Word That Explains Why Chatbots Sound So Human”, in The New York Times, New York, N.Y.: The…. From the entry pragmatics
  • Lynchian is the go-to adjective to describe any sniff of the uncanny and esoteric on screen, from Donnie Darko to True Detective.2023 January 9, Phil Hoad, “Deviant obsessions: how David Lynch predicted our fragmented times”, in The Guardian. From the entry Lynchian
  • In fact, the most uncanny contemporary liminal spaces combine the familiarity of, say, a New York City tourist magnet with an unnatural emptiness.2022 November 1, Jake Pitre, “The Eerie Comfort of Liminal Spaces”, in Jeffrey Goldberg, editor, The Atlantic, Washington, D.C.: The…. From the entry liminal space
  • More unusual is perhaps the appropriation of a psychoanalytical theory to robotics–which is, in effect, what the uncanny valley aims to do.2015, Kathleen Richardson, An Anthropology of Robots and AI, Routledge, →ISBN. From the entry uncanny valley
  • David Milarch calls him the “rain man of trees” because of his brilliance with tree data and his uncanny knack for finding the big ones.2013, Jim Robbins, The Man Who Plants Trees, →ISBN. From the entry rain man
  • He leaped almost into the teeth of the blue-tinged ray which knifed up with uncanny accuracy from the slit in the roof of the hut.2011, Anthony Gilmore, Raiders Invisible. From the entry knife up
  • A kind of aural uncanny is produced, with classic pop ballads occurring in unexpected places and an unlocatable industrial hum subsisting with—or even muffling—dialogue.2008, Andrew Dix, Beginning Film Studies, Manchester University Press, →ISBN, page 154. From the entry Lynchian
  • More importantly, the unbeaten New York native showed an uncanny ability to adjust his gameplan on the fly and stun unsuspecting opponents.2008 December 28, Thomas Gerbasi, “The Highly Unofficial 2008 UFC Awards - The Fighters”, in UFC. From the entry fight IQ
  • It all sounds to us remarkably nineteenth-century; Petrarch's romantic sentiments foreshadow with uncanny precision those of Dante Gabriel Rossetti or Alfred de Musset.2007, Edwin Mullins, “Palaces and Petrarch”, in Avignon of the Popes: City of Exiles, Oxford, Oxfordshire: Signal Books, published 2017…. From the entry foreshadow
  • Much like Cappelletto, his American child prodigy counterpart, Nyman has a prodigious, possibly eidetic memory, uncanny anagramming abilities, and better strategic vision than his peers.2001, Stefan Fatsis, Word Freak - Heartbreak, Triumph, Genius, and Obsession in the World of Competitive Scrabble Players, page 246. From the entry eidetic memory
  • But if Sedlar and Ales aren't the same, then there's only one conclusion to come to: they bear an uncanny resemblance to each other!1936, Barnaby Ross, Drury Lane's Last Case, republished, March 1946, as by Ellery Queen, Little, Brown, page 250. From the entry penny-dreadfulish
  • For it was approaching that uncanny time of year, the festival of Beltane, when the auld pagans were wont to sacrifice to their god Baal.1902, John Buchan, The Outgoing of the Tide. From the entry graceless
  • There’s an uncanny valley effect occurring: Your friends look more like brands, and brands look more like your friends, so it’s increasingly hard to tell which is which.2016 September 22, Kyle Chayka, “Instagram's Creepy New Ads Look Like Posts From Your Friends”, in The Atlantic. From the entry uncanny valley
  • Neil's humans leave the planet and go off to start a new space colony.' I've always felt Neil had a great deal of really uncanny prescience in his writing."2012, Katherine Monk, “Facing Down the Grim Reaper: Illness and Survival”, in Joni: The Creative Odyssey of Joni Mitchell, Vancouver…. From the entry glass harp
  • The uncanny animal figure entailed by the dangerosity of the rival, who separates the subject from the mother, is also the one which is linked with seduction.1992, Psychanalyse à l'université, page 146. From the entry dangerosity
  • He could outpolitick even the most experienced professionals, and he possessed an uncanny sixth sense—he knew precisely the means necessary to win votes or get bills passed.1991, Michael L. Kurtz, Morgan D. Peoples, Earl K. Long: The Saga of Uncle Earl and Louisiana Politics, page 1. From the entry outpolitick
  • The nights were now cold, gemmed with a multitude of bright stars, uncanny with the querulous wail of coyotes and the occasional deep voices of wolves.1922, A. M. Chisholm, A Thousand a Plate. From the entry querulous
  • Those born as Therians can control their transformations to a certain or limited extent (through skill checks on their Therianism uncanny ability) and maintain consciousness (rember what happened while transformed).2015, Robert Neri, The Monster Magnus Vol.I, page 128. From the entry therianism
  • Magritte, unique among the surrealists, survived the sea change from the modern to its sequel, becoming in the process something of a postmodern emblem: the uncanny, Lacanian foreclusion, without expression.1991, Fredric Jameson, Postmodernism, or, the Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism, Duke University Press, page 10. From the entry foreclusion

Meaning of uncanny

  1. adjective Strange, and mysteriously unsettling (as if supernatural); weird.
  2. adjective Careless.
  3. noun Something that is simultaneously familiar and strange, typically leading to feelings of discomfort.

Full definition of uncanny

Questions about uncanny in a sentence

How do you use uncanny in a sentence?
Uncanny is used as an adjective and noun. For example: “He bore an uncanny resemblance to the dead sailor.”
What is a short sentence with uncanny?
“The conversational tone is almost uncanny.”
What does uncanny mean?
Uncanny means strange, and mysteriously unsettling (as if supernatural); weird.

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: uncanny (page history and authors) and the entries each sentence comes from. Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws chose the sentences, left out offensive ones and quotations older than 1900, and marked the word in each. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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