eerie

[eer-ee] /ˈɪər i/

adjective, eerier, eeriest.

uncanny, so as to inspire superstitious fear; weird:

an eerie midnight howl.

Chiefly Scot. affected with superstitious fear.

Also, eery.

Origin

1250-1300; Middle English eri, dialectal variant of argh, Old English earg cowardly; cognate with Old Frisian erg, Old Norse argr evil, German arg cowardly

Related forms

eerily, adverb

eeriness, noun

Can be confused

aerie, eerie, Erie.

Synonyms

1. See weird.

Examples from the web for eerie

Its eerie accuracy remains one of history's greatest mysteries.
The music on the soundtrack exaggerated the eerie atmosphere and kept me wary.
So passionate, so full of pain, it sounded strange and eerie.
The eerie canoe trail slips through sunless channels of brown water.
It is pretty eerie outside without a hint of a breeze so everything is completely still and very dark.
Nearby houses had been abandoned and there was an eerie emptiness in the normally densely populated countryside.
It was an eerie quiet.
Several eerie things in the story seemed to presage Ledger's death.
He specialized in eerie situations with powerful mythic overtones.
The eerie glow is called Hawking radiation, and physicists have been hunting it for decades.

British Dictionary definitions for eerie

eerie

/ˈɪərɪ/

adjective eerier, eeriest

(esp of places, an atmosphere, etc) mysteriously or uncannily frightening or disturbing; weird; ghostly

Derived Forms

eerily, adverb
eeriness, noun

Word Origin

C13: originally Scottish and Northern English, probably from Old English earg cowardly, miserable

Word Origin and History for eerie

adj.

c.1300, "fearful, timid," north England and Scottish variant of Old English earg "cowardly, fearful," from Proto-Germanic *argaz (cf. Old Frisian erg "evil, bad," Middle Dutch arch "bad," Dutch arg, Old High German arg "cowardly, worthless," German arg "bad, wicked," Old Norse argr "unmanly, voluptuous," Swedish arg "malicious").

Sense of "causing fear because of strangeness" is first attested 1792. Related: Eerily. Finnish arka "cowardly" is a Germanic loan-word.