different between strange vs uncanny

English

Etymology

From Middle English straunge, strange, stronge, from Old French estrange, from Latin extraneus (“that which is on the outside”). Doublet of extraneous. Cognate with French étrange (“strange, foreign”) and Spanish extranjero (“foreign”). Displaced native Old English seldc?þ.

Pronunciation

• enPR: str?nj, IPA^(key): /?st?e?nd??/
• Rhymes: -e?nd?

Adjective

strange (comparative stranger, superlative strangest)

1. Not normal; odd, unusual, surprising, out of the ordinary.

   He thought it strange that his girlfriend wore shorts in the winter.

   • c. 1598, William Shakespeare, Much Ado about Nothing, Act IV, Scene 1,^[1]

     I do love nothing in the world so well as you: is not that strange?

   • 1674, John Milton, Paradise Lost, Book 9, lines 598-601,^[2]

     Sated at length, ere long I might perceave

     Strange alteration in me, to degree

     Of Reason in my inward Powers, and Speech

     Wanted not long, though to this shape retain’d.

2. Unfamiliar, not yet part of one's experience.

   I moved to a strange town when I was ten.

   • c. 1604, William Shakespeare, Measure for Measure, Act IV, Scene 2,^[3]

     […] here is the hand and seal of the duke: you know the character, I doubt not; and the signet is not strange to you.

   • 1955, Rex Stout, "The Next Witness", in Three Witnesses, October 1994 Bantam edition, ?ISBN, pages 48–49:

     She's probably sitting there hoping a couple of strange detectives will drop in.

3. (particle physics) Having the quantum mechanical property of strangeness.

   Hypernym: flavor

   • 2004 Frank Close, Particle Physics: A Very Short Introduction, Oxford, page 93:

     A strange quark is electrically charged, carrying an amount -1/3, as does the down quark.

4. (mathematics) Of an attractor: having a fractal structure.
5. (obsolete) Belonging to another country; foreign.
   • 1570, Roger Ascham, The Scholemaster, London, Book 1,^[4]

     I take goyng thither [to Italy], and liuing there, for a yonge ientleman, that doth not goe vnder the kepe and garde of such a man, as both, by wisedome can, and authoritie dare rewle him, to be meruelous dangerous […] not bicause I do contemne, either the knowledge of strange and diuerse tonges, and namelie the Italian tonge […] or else bicause I do despise, the learning that is gotten […]

   • c. 1594, William Shakespeare, Love’s Labour’s Lost, Act IV, Scene 2,^[5]

     […] one of the strange queen’s lords.

   • 1611, King James Version of the Bible, Psalm 137:4,^[6]

     How shall we sing the Lord’s song in a strange land?

   • 1662, Samuel Pepys, Diary entry dated 27 November, 1662, in Henry B. Wheatley (editor), The Diary of Samuel Pepys, New York: Croscup & Sterling, 1893, Volume 2, Part 2, p. 377,^[7]

     I could not see the [Russian] Embassador in his coach; but his attendants in their habits and fur caps very handsome, comely men […] But Lord! to see the absurd nature of Englishmen, that cannot forbear laughing and jeering at every thing that looks strange.

6. (obsolete) Reserved; distant in deportment.
   • c. 1596, William Shakespeare, The Merchant of Venice, Act I, Scene 1,^[8]

     Good signiors both, when shall we laugh? say, when?

     You grow exceeding strange: must it be so?

   • 1850, Nathaniel Hawthorne, The Scarlet Letter, Boston: Ticknor, Reed & Fields, Chapter 19, p. 253,^[9]

     She may be strange and shy at first, but will soon learn to love thee!

7. (obsolete) Backward; slow.
   • 1621, Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher, Thierry and Theodoret, London: Thomas Walkley, Act III, Scene 1,^[10]

     […] to his name your barrennesse adds rule;

     Who louing the effect, would not be strange

     In fauoring the cause; looke on the profit,

     And gaine will quickly point the mischiefe out.

8. (obsolete) Not familiar; unaccustomed; inexperienced.
   • c. 1607, William Shakespeare, Timon of Athens, Act IV, Scene 3,^[11]

     I know thee well;

     But in thy fortunes am unlearn’d and strange.

9. (law) Not belonging to one.

Synonyms

• (not normal): See Thesaurus:strange
• (not part of one's experience): new, unfamiliar, unknown

Antonyms

• (not normal): everyday, normal, regular (especially US), standard, usual, unsurprising
• (not part of one's experience): familiar, known

Derived terms

Related terms

• estrange, estranged
• stranger

Translations

Verb

strange (third-person singular simple present stranges, present participle stranging, simple past and past participle stranged)

1. (obsolete, transitive) To alienate; to estrange.
2. (obsolete, intransitive) To be estranged or alienated.
3. (obsolete, intransitive) To wonder; to be astonished (at something).
   • 1661, Joseph Glanvill, The Vanity of Dogmatizing, London: Henry Eversden, Chapter 19, p. 184,^[12]

     [these] were all the Assertions of Aristotle, which Theology pronounceth impieties. Which yet we need not strange at from one, of whom a Father saith, Nec Deum coluit nec curavit [he neither worshipped nor cared for God]:

Derived terms

• bestrange

Noun

strange (uncountable)

1. (slang, uncountable) vagina
   • 2013 "Taming Strange" (episode of South Park TV series)

     Ike: Yeah, for my cool cool trick I'm gonna tame Foofa's strange.

     Plex: Tame mo-what?

     Ike: I can tame Foofa's strange, bro.

Anagrams

• Sargent, Stagner, Stanger, argents, garnets, gerants, rangest

Esperanto

Etymology

stranga (“strange”) +? -e

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /?stran?e/
• Hyphenation: stran?ge
• Rhymes: -an?e

Adverb

strange

1. strangely

Middle English

Adjective

strange

1. Alternative form of straunge

Old English

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /?str?n?e/, [?str???e]

Adjective

strange

1. Inflected form of strang

West Flemish

Noun

strange n

1. beach

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