eerie
Americanadjective
-
uncanny, so as to inspire superstitious fear; weird
an eerie midnight howl.
-
Chiefly Scot. affected with superstitious fear.
adjective
Related Words
See weird.
Other Word Forms
- eerily adverb
- eeriness noun
Etymology
Origin of eerie
First recorded in 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”
Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
The palm wood snaking through the center of Mohammad Al Faraj’s eerie installation seems like the skeletal vertebrae of some giant creature.
From The Wall Street Journal • Mar. 13, 2026
Justin, the believer, is instantly alarmed by how these eerie tapes escalate from cute banter to ghostly crying babies and backward incantations.
From Los Angeles Times • Mar. 11, 2026
At first, the feeling was eerie; the cameras peered into a city with dimmed lights, shrouded in silence.
From Salon • Mar. 7, 2026
The facts in the Gray case bear an eerie similarity to the Crumbleys’.
From Slate • Mar. 5, 2026
I suppose if I had a moment of doubt at all it was then, as I stood in that cold, eerie stairwell looking back at the apartment from which I had come.
From "The Secret History" by Donna Tartt
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
