uncanny

Meanings

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

1. Something that is simultaneously familiar and strange, typically leading to feelings of discomfort.

Etymology

From un- + canny; thus “beyond one's ken,” or outside one's familiar knowledge or perceptions. Compare Middle English unkanne (“unknown”). In the noun sense a translation of Sigmund Freud's usage of German unheimlich (Das Unheimliche, 1919).