different between horrible vs uncanny

English

Etymology

First attested in Middle English (alternately as horrible and orrible) in 1303: from Old French horrible, orrible, orible, from Latin horribilis, from horr(?re) (“tremble”) + -ibilis (“-ible”).

Pronunciation

• (Received Pronunciation) IPA^(key): /?h???b?l/
• (US) IPA^(key): /?h???b?l/, /?h???b?l/, [-b??]
• (NYC, Philadelphia, Ireland) IPA^(key): /?h???b?l/

Noun

horrible (plural horribles)

1. A thing that causes horror; a terrifying thing, particularly a prospective bad consequence asserted as likely to result from an act.
   • 1851, Herman Melville, Moby Dick

     Here's a carcase. I know not all that may be coming, but be it what it will, I'll go to it laughing. Such a waggish leering as lurks in all your horribles!

   • 1982, United States Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, The Genocide Convention: Hearing Before the Committee on Foreign Relations, United States Senate

     A lot of the possible horribles conjured up by the people objecting to this convention ignore the plain language of this treaty.

   • 1991, Alastair Scott, Tracks Across Alaska: A Dog Sled Journey

     The pot had previously simmered skate wings, cods' heads, whales, pigs' hearts and a long litany of other horribles.

   • 2000, John Dean, CNN interview, January 21, 2000:

     I'm trying to convince him that the criminal behavior that's going on at the White House has to end. And I give him one horrible after the next. I just keep raising them. He sort of swats them away.

   • 2001, Neil K. Komesar, Law's Limits: The Rule of Law and the Supply and Demand of Rights

     Many scholars have demonstrated these horribles and contemplated significant limitations on class actions.

2. A person wearing a comic or grotesque costume in a parade of horribles.

Translations

Adjective

horrible (comparative horribler or more horrible, superlative horriblest or most horrible)

1. Causing horror; terrible; shocking.
2. Tremendously bad.
   • 2010, Roger Ebert, Roger Ebert's Movie Yearbook 2010, page 599:

     Having now absorbed all or parts of 750 responses to my complaints about Transformers, I suppose I shouldn't be surprised that most of those writing agree with me that it is a horrible movie.

Synonyms

• See Thesaurus:frightening
• See Thesaurus:bad

Related terms

• horrific
• horrify
• horror
• horrendous

Translations

References

Asturian

Etymology

Borrowed from Latin horribilis.

Adjective

horrible (epicene, plural horribles)

1. horrible

Related terms

• horror

Catalan

Etymology

Borrowed from Latin horribilis.

Pronunciation

• (Balearic, Central) IPA^(key): /u?ri.bl?/
• (Valencian) IPA^(key): /o?ri.ble/

Adjective

horrible (masculine and feminine plural horribles)

1. horrible

Derived terms

• horriblement

Related terms

• horror

French

Etymology

From Old French horrible, orrible, orible, borrowed from Latin horribilis.

Pronunciation

• ^{(mute h)} IPA^(key): /?.?ibl/

Adjective

horrible (plural horribles)

1. horrible; causing horror.

Related terms

• horreur

Further reading

• “horrible” in Trésor de la langue française informatisé (The Digitized Treasury of the French Language).

Galician

Alternative forms

• horríbel

Etymology

Borrowed from Latin horribilis.

Adjective

horrible m or f (plural horribles)

1. horrible

Derived terms

• horriblemente

Related terms

• horror

Middle English

Etymology

Borrowed from Old French horrible, orrible, orible, from Latin horribilis.

Adjective

horrible

1. horrible

Descendants

• English: horrible

Spanish

Etymology

Borrowed from Latin horribilis.

Adjective

horrible (plural horribles)

1. horrible

Derived terms

• horriblemente

Related terms

• horror

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)

1. Strange, and mysteriously unsettling (as if supernatural); weird.
2. (Britain dialectal) Careless.

Translations

Noun

uncanny

1. (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.

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