eerie
strange and frightening
TRANSLATION
eerie = unheimlich, gruselig, furchterregend (woerterbuch.de) --- GOOGLE INDEX eerie: approximately 8,800,000 hits
STATISTICS
IN THE PRESS
Déjà vu, that EERIE sensation of having already lived through a particular moment - is one of psychology's most enduring, but rarely studied mysteries. Yet if it were better understood, argues Alan Brown, professor of psychology at Southern Methodist University, it could be an effective window into the brain.
(Psychology Today magazine)
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But it is so lonely and EERIE in this dim light that I was frightened and ran out again.
- The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
(Psychology Today magazine)
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But it is so lonely and EERIE in this dim light that I was frightened and ran out again.
- The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
Did you
know?
eerie
adjective
- strange in a frightening and mysterious way
adverb - eerily
noun - eeriness
(Cambridge Advanced Learner's Dictionary)
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WORD ORIGIN
From around 1300, eerie is a northern England and Scottish variant of the Old English "earg", meaning cowardly or fearful. Earg is also related to the Swedish arg (malicious) and German arg (bad, terrible). The sense of "causing fear because of something strange" was first recorded in 1792.
Fear, apprehension, fright, horror - all emotions that whilst supposedly making us uneasy, we still seek out on occasion. Was there a storyteller in your family who enjoyed scaring small children with stories of the bogeyman? When the carnival came to town, did you head to the haunted house first? Did you and friends play hide and seek at night in the summer or bury yourselves under a blanket with a flashlight to see who could make the most horrible and terrifying faces? Did you ever venture into the musty, dirty, cold and damp basement of your home and then rush back up the stairs out of breath because you swore you saw "something"?
Maybe you liked scary movies? Depending on your age, you likely grew up watching Boris Karloff as Frankenstein, Alfred Hitchcock's The Birds, Robert Englund as the ultra-creepy Freddy Krueger in The Nightmare on Elm Street or the low-budget cult film The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. Or maybe you've seen them all…
Our fascination with "eerie" doesn't stop with movies. Mega-author Stephen King, with more than 300 million books sold, is proof of that. Granted, many of his books have been made into movies, but for a good scare there is nothing like curling up in front of the fireplace with one of his page-turners until 3:00 a.m. and then tiptoeing down the hallway to a pitch-dark bedroom, all the while listening for eerie noises and looking for eerie shadows and monsters under the bed!
(sources: The Online Etymology Dictionary)
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SYNONYMS
bizarre, bloodcurdling, crawly, chilling, creepy, fantastic, fearful, frightening, ghostly, hair-raising, horrendous, horrifying, mysterious, scary, spectral, spine-chilling, spooky, strange, supernatural, superstitious, terrifying, uncanny, unearthly, weird, unnerving
(Roget's New Millennium™ Thesaurus)
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IMPRESS YOUR FRIENDS TODAY
say something like:
"I have an eerie feeling that something bad is going to happen with this deal. Let's take one more look at the contract to make sure it's okay."
adjective
- strange in a frightening and mysterious way
adverb - eerily
noun - eeriness
(Cambridge Advanced Learner's Dictionary)
---
WORD ORIGIN
From around 1300, eerie is a northern England and Scottish variant of the Old English "earg", meaning cowardly or fearful. Earg is also related to the Swedish arg (malicious) and German arg (bad, terrible). The sense of "causing fear because of something strange" was first recorded in 1792.
Fear, apprehension, fright, horror - all emotions that whilst supposedly making us uneasy, we still seek out on occasion. Was there a storyteller in your family who enjoyed scaring small children with stories of the bogeyman? When the carnival came to town, did you head to the haunted house first? Did you and friends play hide and seek at night in the summer or bury yourselves under a blanket with a flashlight to see who could make the most horrible and terrifying faces? Did you ever venture into the musty, dirty, cold and damp basement of your home and then rush back up the stairs out of breath because you swore you saw "something"?
Maybe you liked scary movies? Depending on your age, you likely grew up watching Boris Karloff as Frankenstein, Alfred Hitchcock's The Birds, Robert Englund as the ultra-creepy Freddy Krueger in The Nightmare on Elm Street or the low-budget cult film The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. Or maybe you've seen them all…
Our fascination with "eerie" doesn't stop with movies. Mega-author Stephen King, with more than 300 million books sold, is proof of that. Granted, many of his books have been made into movies, but for a good scare there is nothing like curling up in front of the fireplace with one of his page-turners until 3:00 a.m. and then tiptoeing down the hallway to a pitch-dark bedroom, all the while listening for eerie noises and looking for eerie shadows and monsters under the bed!
(sources: The Online Etymology Dictionary)
---
SYNONYMS
bizarre, bloodcurdling, crawly, chilling, creepy, fantastic, fearful, frightening, ghostly, hair-raising, horrendous, horrifying, mysterious, scary, spectral, spine-chilling, spooky, strange, supernatural, superstitious, terrifying, uncanny, unearthly, weird, unnerving
(Roget's New Millennium™ Thesaurus)
---
IMPRESS YOUR FRIENDS TODAY
say something like:
"I have an eerie feeling that something bad is going to happen with this deal. Let's take one more look at the contract to make sure it's okay."
