different between ugly vs uncanny

English

Alternative forms

• ougly (obsolete)

Etymology

From Middle English ugly, uggely, uglike, borrowed from Old Norse uggligr (“fearful, dreadful, horrible in appearance”), from uggr (“fear, apprehension, dread”) (possibly related to agg (“strife, hate”)), equivalent to ug +? -ly. Cognate with Scots ugly, uglie, Icelandic ugglegur. Meaning softened to "very unpleasant to look at" around the late 14th century, and sense of "morally offensive" attested from around 1300.

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /???li/
• Rhymes: -??li

Adjective

ugly (comparative uglier, superlative ugliest)

1. Displeasing to the eye; not aesthetically pleasing.
2. Displeasing to the ear or some other sense.
3. Offensive to one's sensibilities or morality.

4. (Southern US) Ill-natured; crossgrained; quarrelsome.

5. Unpleasant; disagreeable; likely to cause trouble or loss.

Related terms

• ug

Synonyms

• (displeasing to the eye): hideous, homely, repulsive, unattractive, uncomely, unsightly
• (displeasing to the ear or some other sense): displeasing, repulsive, unattractive
• (offensive to one's sensibilities or morality): corrupt, immoral, vile
• See also Thesaurus:ugly

Antonyms

• (displeasing to the eye): attractive, beautiful, gorgeous, handsome, pretty, sightly
• (displeasing to the ear or some other sense): attractive, pleasing
• (offensive to one's sensibilities or morality): moral

Derived terms

Translations

Noun

ugly (countable and uncountable, plural uglies)

1. (slang, uncountable) Ugliness.
   • 2009: Lady Gaga and RedOne, "Bad Romance":

     I want your ugly / I want your disease.

2. (slang) An ugly person or thing.
3. (Britain, informal, dated) A shade for the face, projecting from a bonnet.
   • 1857, Charles Kingsley, Two Years Ago

     blue uglies

Translations

Verb

ugly (third-person singular simple present uglies, present participle uglying, simple past and past participle uglied)

1. (transitive, nonstandard) To make ugly (sometimes with up).

Anagrams

• guly

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