Adjacent Words

eerie definitions

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WordNet (r) 3.0 (2005)

adj
1: suggestive of the supernatural; mysterious; "an eerie feeling of deja vu"
2: inspiring a feeling of fear; strange and frightening; "an uncomfortable and eerie stillness in the woods"; "an eerie midnight howl" [syn: eerie, eery]

Merriam Webster's

also eery adjective (eerier; -est) Etymology: Middle English (northern dialect) eri Date: 14th century 1. chiefly Scottish affected with fright ; scared 2. so mysterious, strange, or unexpected as to send a chill up the spine <a coyote's eerie howl> <the similarities were eerie>; also seemingly not of earthly origin <the flames cast an eerie glow> Synonyms: see weird • eerily adverb • eeriness noun

Oxford Reference Dictionary

adj. (eerier, eeriest) gloomy and strange; weird, frightening (an eerie silence). Derivatives: eerily adv. eeriness n. Etymology: orig. N.Engl. and Sc. eri, of obscure orig.: cf. OE earg cowardly

Webster's 1913 Dictionary

Eerie Ee"rie, Eery Ee"ry, a. [Scotch, fr. AS. earh timid.] 1. Serving to inspire fear, esp. a dread of seeing ghosts; wild; weird; as, eerie stories. She whose elfin prancer springs By night to eery warblings. --Tennyson. 2. Affected with fear; affrighted. --Burns.

Collin's Cobuild Dictionary

(eerier, eeriest) If you describe something as eerie, you mean that it seems strange and frightening, and makes you feel nervous. I walked down the eerie dark path. ...an eerie calm. ADJ • eerily Monrovia after the fighting is eerily quiet. ADV

Moby Thesaurus

arcane, awe-inspiring, awesome, awful, awing, bizarre, blue, cadaverous, corpselike, crawly, creepy, deadly, deathlike, deathly, deathly pale, dreadful, eldritch, esoteric, extramundane, extraterrestrial, fantastic, fey, frightening, ghastly, ghostlike, ghostly, grisly, grotesque, gruesome, haggard, hypernormal, hyperphysical, livid, lurid, macabre, mortuary, mysterious, numinous, occult, otherworldly, pale, preterhuman, preternatural, preternormal, pretersensual, psychic, scary, spectral, spiritual, spookish, spooky, strange, superhuman, supernatural, supernormal, superphysical, supersensible, supersensual, supramundane, supranatural, transcendental, transmundane, uncanny, unco, uncolike, unearthly, unhuman, unworldly, wan, weird