eerie
Americanadjective
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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”
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.
Forced to restructure the film and mix existing footage with reshot scenes, all of those sequences of Michael alongside children now feel eerie and upsetting, even if the film doesn’t touch on the allegations.
From Salon • Apr. 25, 2026
With an eye for eerie detail, Burke balances the tightly-wound mystery with cinematic descriptions of homesteading life and the occasional moment of beauty as Natalie’s resistance is tested.
From Los Angeles Times • Apr. 7, 2026
What happened next had an eerie feeling of familiarity about it.
From Slate • Mar. 29, 2026
Using AI to generate images, Mr. Park collages these pictures together, then runs the result through CRT TVs, replicating the flickering, eerie results in photorealistic canvases.
From The Wall Street Journal • Feb. 27, 2026
I knew that the items must belong to a ragman, but there was something eerie about the way they were sorted, as though they were pagan offerings.
From "The City Beautiful" by Aden Polydoros
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.
