eerie
Americanadjective
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uncanny, so as to inspire superstitious fear; weird
an eerie midnight howl.
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Chiefly Scot. affected with superstitious fear.
adjective
Synonym Usage
See weird.
Other Word Forms
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”
Explanation
Eerie means spooky, creepy or suggestively supernatural. If it's eerie, it's sure to make the hair on the back of your neck stand up. Back in the 1300s when eerie first came on the scene, it meant "fearful or timid." It took a good 500 years or so before it morphed into the adjective we know today, which now means "causing fear because of strangeness." And the strangeness is key: Something that's eerie isn't just scary. It's mysterious, ghostly, and gives you the creeps. Like dark old castles, misty graveyards and creaky sounds in the middle of the night.
Vocabulary lists containing eerie
The Grim Reader: Wicked Words of Grave Importance for Halloween
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Uncanny, Creepy, or Downright Scary: Words For Halloween
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NAEP Test Words
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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.
See Examples For:
Common to much of the user-generated content are eerie images and haunting stories of mysterious, yellow wallpapered corridors and empty office-like spaces that exist outside of, or beyond, reality itself.
From Science Daily ● Jul. 26, 2026
The eerie ambient music that drives “Obsession” — so artfully serrated and delicately mangled by Burwell — emerged from a counterintuitive creative nuance that AI could never capture.
From Los Angeles Times ● Jul. 21, 2026
The stock market in July has settled into an almost eerie calm on the surface.
From MarketWatch ● Jul. 19, 2026
Sheppard described the house as being "silent" and "very eerie" when he arrived.
From BBC ● Jun. 25, 2026
A beautiful theory will be simple, compact, and spare; it will give a sense of completeness and often an eerie sense of symmetry.
From "Zero: The Biography of a Dangerous Idea" by Charles Seife
Schlossberg, we should mention here, is Kennedy’s cousin once removed, which adds an even eerier aura to the story.
From Slate ● Aug. 7, 2024
An eerier kind of togetherness emerged in John Jasperse’s “Visitation,” for Doug LeCours, Tim Bendernagel and Cynthia Koppe.
From New York Times ● Dec. 2, 2022
Even eerier was the lead story, about Adolf Hitler and the rise of his Third Reich.
From Washington Post ● Sep. 26, 2021
“Possessed” by Iranian-born Shirin Neshat is an eerier work.
From Seattle Times ● Aug. 15, 2013
I found myself growing eerier and eerier, for I dare say I was a little fevered by my restless night, and hurried to dress and get downstairs.
From The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 2 (of 25) by Stevenson, Robert Louis
The eeriest costume this Halloween season would be Aunt Gladys, with her odd copper wig, oversized sunglasses, blue eyeshadow, and smeary red lipstick.
From Slate ● Oct. 31, 2025
With worries about the spread of gun ownership in his head, Fogerty devised one of his eeriest productions for this swampy psych-rock number.
From Los Angeles Times ● Jul. 3, 2025
The eeriest Gamache novel yet, “A World of Curiosities” is also one of Penny’s most intricately plotted and harrowing.
From Washington Post ● Dec. 2, 2022
Plenty has been written about no crowds in sporting stadiums, but a Wales and England encounter in the Six Nations presented perhaps the eeriest atmosphere yet.
From BBC ● Feb. 27, 2021
The eeriest phase of the investigation began when the police, holding their flickering lanterns high, entered the hotel basement, a cavern of brick and timber measuring 50 by 165 feet.
From "The Devil in the White City" by Erik Larson
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.
