different between dreadful vs uncanny
dreadful
English
Alternative forms
- dreadfull
- dredful (obsolete)
Pronunciation
- IPA(key): /?d??d.f?l/
Etymology
From Middle English dredful, dredfull, dredeful (also dreful), equivalent to dread +? -ful.
Adjective
dreadful (comparative more dreadful, superlative most dreadful)
- Full of something causing dread, whether
- Genuinely horrific, awful, or alarming; dangerous, risky.
- 1900, L. Frank Baum, The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, Chapter 23:
- "...Aunt Em will surely think something dreadful has happened to me, and that will make her put on mourning..."
- 1900, L. Frank Baum, The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, Chapter 23:
- (hyperbolic) Unpleasant, awful, very bad (also used as an intensifier).
- 1682, T. Creech's translation of Lucretius, De Natura Rerum, Book II, 52:
- Here some... Look dreadful gay in their own sparkling blood.
- 1682, T. Creech's translation of Lucretius, De Natura Rerum, Book II, 52:
- (obsolete) Awesome, awe-inspiring, causing feelings of reverence.
- Genuinely horrific, awful, or alarming; dangerous, risky.
- (obsolete) Full of dread, whether
- Scared, afraid, frightened.
- Timid, easily frightened.
- Reverential, full of pious awe.
Adverb
dreadful (comparative more dreadful, superlative most dreadful)
- (informal) Dreadfully.
Usage notes
The senses of "dreadful" synonymous with "afraid" similarly use the infinitive or the preposition "of": they were dreadful to build or the boy was dreadful of his majesty. These senses are, however, now obsolete.
When used as an intensifier, "dreadful" is actually a form of the adverb "dreadfully" and thus considered informal or vulgar.
Synonyms
- See Thesaurus:frightening
- See Thesaurus:bad
Derived terms
- dreadfully
- dreadfulness
Translations
Noun
dreadful (plural dreadfuls)
- A shocker: a report of a crime written in a provokingly lurid style.
- A journal or broadsheet printing such reports.
- A shocking or sensational crime.
Derived terms
- penny dreadful
Further reading
- Oxford English Dictionary, 1884–1928, and First Supplement, 1933.
dreadful From the web:
- what dreadful means
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uncanny
English
Etymology
From un- +? canny; thus “beyond one's ken,” or outside one's familiar knowledge or perceptions. Compare Middle English unkanne (“unknown”).
Pronunciation
- (US) IPA(key): /?n?kæni/
- Rhymes: -æni
Adjective
uncanny (comparative uncannier, superlative uncanniest)
- Strange, and mysteriously unsettling (as if supernatural); weird.
- (Britain dialectal) Careless.
Translations
Noun
uncanny
- (psychology, psychoanalysis, Freud) Something that is simultaneously familiar and strange, typically leading to feelings of discomfort; 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 [1]:
- 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 [2]:
- 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 [3]:
- 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 [4]:
- 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 [5]:
- 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 [6]:
- 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.
- 2011, Espen Dahl, Hans-Gunter Heimbrock, In Between: The Holy Beyond Modern Dichotomies, page 99:
Usage notes
In common modern usage, "canny" and "uncanny" are no longer antonyms, although they are not synonyms.
Derived terms
- uncanny valley
- uncannily
Related terms
Translations
References
uncanny From the web:
- what uncanny meaning
- what's uncanny valley
- what uncanny in tagalog
- what uncanny means in spanish
- what uncanny synonym
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- what does uncanny mean class 9
- what does uncanny
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