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Obscure vs Uncanny - What's the difference?

obscure | uncanny |

As adjectives the difference between obscure and uncanny

is that obscure is dark, faint or indistinct while uncanny is strange, and mysteriously unsettling (as if supernatural); weird.

As a verb obscure

is (label) to render obscure; to darken; to make dim; to keep in the dark; to hide; to make less visible, intelligible, legible, glorious, beautiful, or illustrious.

obscure

English

Adjective

(en-adj)
  • Dark, faint or indistinct.
  • * (Dante Alighieri), , 1, 1-2
  • I found myself in an obscure wood.
  • * Bible, Proverbs xx. 20
  • His lamp shall be put out in obscure darkness.
  • Hidden, out of sight or inconspicuous.
  • * (William Shakespeare)
  • The obscure bird / Clamoured the livelong night.
  • * Sir J. Davies
  • the obscure corners of the earth
  • Difficult to understand.
  • * {{quote-magazine, date=2013-08-03, volume=408, issue=8847, magazine=(The Economist)
  • , title= The machine of a new soul , passage=The yawning gap in neuroscientists’ understanding of their topic is in the intermediate scale of the brain’s anatomy. Science has a passable knowledge of how individual nerve cells, known as neurons, work. It also knows which visible lobes and ganglia of the brain do what. But how the neurons are organised in these lobes and ganglia remains obscure .}}

    Usage notes

    * The comparative obscurer and superlative obscurest, though formed by valid rules for English, are less common than more obscure' and ' most obscure .

    Synonyms

    * enigmatic * mysterious * esoteric

    Antonyms

    * clear

    Derived terms

    * obscurable * unobscurable

    Verb

    (obscur)
  • (label) To render obscure; to darken; to make dim; to keep in the dark; to hide; to make less visible, intelligible, legible, glorious, beautiful, or illustrious.
  • * (William Shakespeare) (1564-1616)
  • They are all couched in a pit hard by Herne's oak, with obscured lights.
  • * (William Wake) (1657-1737)
  • There is scarce any duty which has been so obscured by the writings of learned men as this.
  • *{{quote-book, year=1959, author=(Georgette Heyer), title=(The Unknown Ajax), chapter=1
  • , passage=But Richmond
  • (label) To hide, put out of sight etc.
  • * (Bill Watterson), Homicidal Psycho Jungle Cat , page 62
  • I realized that the purpose of writing is to inflate weak ideas, obscure poor reasoning, and inhibit clarity.
  • To conceal oneself; to hide.
  • * (Beaumont and Fletcher) (1603-1625)
  • How! There's bad news. / I must obscure , and hear it.

    uncanny

    English

    (uncanny)

    Adjective

    (er)
  • strange, and mysteriously unsettling (as if supernatural); weird
  • He bore an uncanny resemblance to the dead sailor.
  • Careless.
  • (rfc-sense) (psychology, psychoanalysis, Freud) Simultaneously familiar and foreign, often uncomfortably so; translation of Freud's usage of the German "unheimlich" (literally "unsecret").
  • * 2011 , Espen Dahl, Hans-Gunter Heimbrock, In Between: The Holy Beyond Modern Dichotomies , page 99:
  • [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)
  • * 2003 , Nicholas Royle, The Uncanny , page 1 [http://books.google.com/books?id=XkvSWxjrMN8C&printsec=frontcover&dq=uncanny+freud&hl=en&sa=X&ei=0uSCUu_5JuqW2AXOkIGIBg&ved=0CD0Q6AEwAg#v=onepage&q=uncanny&f=false]:
  • The uncanny involves feelings of uncertainty, in particular regarding the reality of who one is and what is being experienced.
  • * 2011 , Anneleen Masschelein, The Unconcept: The Freudian Uncanny in Late-Twentieth-Century Theory , page 2 [http://books.google.com/books?id=9XgohiN3vOwC&printsec=frontcover&dq=uncanny+freud&hl=en&sa=X&ei=0uSCUu_5JuqW2AXOkIGIBg&ved=0CEIQ6AEwAw#v=onepage&q=uncanny%20freud&f=false]:
  • Because the uncanny affects and haunts everything, it is in constant transformation and cannot be pinned down.
  • * 2001 , Diane Jonte-Pace, Speaking the Unspeakable , page 81 [http://books.google.com/books?id=GrtZ4fBOlTIC&printsec=frontcover&dq=uncanny+freud&hl=en&sa=X&ei=0uSCUu_5JuqW2AXOkIGIBg&ved=0CEgQ6AEwBA#v=onepage&q=uncanny&f=false]:
  • 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").
  • * 1982 , Samuel Weber, The Legend of Freud , page 20 [http://books.google.com/books?id=mRwvpP1SiWEC&printsec=frontcover&dq=uncanny+freud&hl=en&sa=X&ei=0uSCUu_5JuqW2AXOkIGIBg&ved=0CE4Q6AEwBQ#v=onepage&q=uncanny&f=false]:
  • 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.
  • * 2005 , Barbara Creed, Phallic Panic , page vii [http://books.google.com/books?id=3JrY_Pc4CFsC&printsec=frontcover&dq=uncanny+freud&hl=en&sa=X&ei=d-iCUrfWB4fu2AWAz4HoBA&ved=0CDUQ6AEwATgK#v=onepage&q=uncanny%20freud&f=false]:
  • 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 .
  • * 1994 , Sonu Shamdasani and Michael Münchow, Speculations after Freud , page 186 [http://books.google.com/books?id=e_P9tt2YF3oC&printsec=frontcover&dq=uncanny+freud&hl=en&sa=X&ei=aumCUoSzEITj2QX1roHYBA&ved=0CEkQ6AEwBTgo#v=onepage&q=uncanny&f=false]:
  • 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.

    Antonyms

    * canny

    Derived terms

    * uncanny valley * uncannily