- 1詭異的、離奇的；也指「像得不可思議」。前者近似「令人發毛」，後者其實帶讚嘆，如 uncanny resemblance（神似）。
Strange in a way you cannot quite explain, and a little because of it. Uncanny is not the same as scary. A tiger is scary; a doll whose eyes seem to follow you is uncanny. The feeling is quieter — something is wrong, or too right, and you cannot say why. There are two everyday uses, and students meet both. First, for a resemblance or an accuracy that is too close to be chance: an uncanny likeness, an uncanny resemblance to her grandmother, an uncanny ability to know what you are thinking. This is the commonest use by far, and it is not negative at all — it is close to . Second, for an atmosphere: an uncanny silence, an uncanny feeling that someone was in the room. Here it is closer to , and it does carry a shadow. There is also a technical life to this word that your students may meet online: Freud wrote about das Unheimliche, translated into English as "the uncanny" — the disturbing feeling when something familiar becomes strange. From that comes the phrase the uncanny valley, used about robots and CG faces that look almost human and therefore feel wrong. If a student has met the word through games or animation, that is probably the sense they carry.
From the word’s history
From un- + canny, thus 'beyond one's ken'.
由 un-「不」加 canny 組成，意指「超出所知範圍」。
組成un- + canny. Canny is an old word from Scots and northern English meaning "knowing, shrewd" — so uncanny is literally "outside what we know," beyond one's ken. The noun sense, "the uncanny," is an English translation of Freud's German unheimlich (1919), which is why that use sounds academic.
原始詞典資料3 筆記錄
以下是外部詞典記錄的用法，摘錄並精簡格式，我們還沒有寫成教學內容。上面的說明才是我們自己寫的；有些用法可能上面已經講過了。
uncannyadj/ʌnˈkæni/
- 1
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.
- 2
dialectalCareless.
uncannynoun/ʌnˈkæni/
- 1
human-sciencesmedicinepsychoanalysisSomething 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.
- 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.
摘錄自 英文維基詞典 English Wiktionary，已精簡格式；依 CC BY-SA 4.0 授權使用，改動後的內容同樣以此授權提供。