Definitions

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun The character or state of being eery. Also spelled eariness.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • noun The condition of being eerie

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • noun strangeness by virtue of being mysterious and inspiring fear

Etymologies

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Examples

  • We all know what a sensation of loneliness or 'eeriness' (to use an expressive term of the ballad poetry) arises to any small party assembling in a single room of a vast desolate mansion: how the timid among them fancy continually that they hear some remote door opening, or trace the sound of suppressed footsteps from some distant staircase.

    Narrative and Miscellaneous Papers Thomas De Quincey 1822

  • We all know what a sensation of loneliness or 'eeriness' (to use an expressive term of the ballad poetry) arises to any small party assembling in a single room of a vast desolate mansion: how the timid among them fancy continually that they hear some remote door opening, or trace the sound of suppressed footsteps from some distant staircase.

    Narrative and Miscellaneous Papers — Volume 2 Thomas De Quincey 1822

  • I think we’re approaching a ‘let’s all drink the Kool-Aid’ kind of eeriness here, if you want to get blunt about it.

    Obama Saves the World (someone get that man a cape) 2009

  • I think we’re approaching a ‘lets all drink the Kool-Aid’ kind of eeriness here, if you want to get blunt about it.

    Obama Saves the World (someone get that man a cape) 2009

  • The story, of course, is not pure invention; several versions of parts, if not the whole, of it will occur to any one who has some knowledge of literature; and I have recently read a variant of great beauty and "eeriness" from the Japanese. [

    A History of the French Novel, Vol. 2 To the Close of the 19th Century George Saintsbury 1889

  • I found the center a very strange and extreme environment for many reasons: the trancelike state of the shoppers consuming everything in their wake; the eeriness of the empty center at night; the constant awareness of surveillance; the day-to-day mix of desperation and humor in our dealings with customers; the industrial past buried beneath us (like many U.K. shopping centers it had been built on former industrial land).

    Catherine O'Flynn - An interview with author 2010

  • Robert then decides the role is too small for him and convinces corporate to promote him to CEO — a position in which he'll freak the staff out with his eeriness and manipulate them.

    Has The Office Found Its New Boss in James Spader? 2011

  • Cui Jie's dystopian scene from 2011, "Bar," also evokes the painterly eeriness of German artists Gerhard Richter and Neo Rauch.

    China's Rising Art Stars 2012

  • The pedestrian details of the system of blinds between agencies and the management of the soon-to-be deceased actually add to the eeriness.

    22 « June « 2009 « The Manga Curmudgeon 2009

  • The pedestrian details of the system of blinds between agencies and the management of the soon-to-be deceased actually add to the eeriness.

    June « 2009 « The Manga Curmudgeon 2009

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