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Uncanny vs Scary - What's the difference?

uncanny | scary |

As adjectives the difference between uncanny and scary

is that uncanny is strange, and mysteriously unsettling (as if supernatural); weird while scary is causing or able to cause fright.

As a noun scary is

barren land having only a thin coat of grass.

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

    scary

    English

    Etymology 1

    Adjective

    (er)
  • Causing or able to cause fright
  • The tiger's jaws were scary.
    She was hiding behind her pillow during the scary parts of the film.
  • (US, colloquial, dated) Subject to sudden alarm; nervous, jumpy.
  • (Whittier)
  • * 1916 , Texas Department of Agriculture, Bulletin (issues 47-57), page 150:
  • And let us say to these interests that, until the Buy-It-Made-In-Texas movement co-operates with the farmers, we are going to be a little scary of the snare.
    Synonyms
    * (causing fright) frightening

    Etymology 2

    From dialectal English .

    Noun

  • Barren land having only a thin coat of grass.
  • Anagrams

    * *