eerie

comparative eerier · superlative eeriest · alternative eery

1. Inspiring fear, especially in a mysterious or shadowy way; strange, weird.

   The eerie sounds seemed to come from the graveyard after midnight.

   5 more examples

   An eerie feeling came over me.

   1899 February, Joseph Conrad, “The Heart of Darkness”, in Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine, volume CLXV, number M, New York, N.Y.: The Leonard Scott Publishing Company, […], →OCLC, part I, page 200

   Dan was beginning to feel very depressed when suddenly the eerie howl of a dingo rang out[.]

   1943, H. Lorna Bingham, The Lost Tribe, Sydney: Winn and Co., page 13, column 2

   I was working in the lab late one night / When my eyes beheld an eerie sight / For my monster, from his slab, began to rise / And suddenly, to my surprise / He did the Mash / He did the Monster Mash.

   1962, “Monster Mash”, Bobby "Boris" Pickett and Lenny Capizzi (lyrics), performed by Bobby (Boris) Pickett and The Crypt-Kickers

   The whole city is immersed in a dystopian-looking smog: urban streets in sepia, emptier than usual, bathed in an eerie quiet.

   2023 June 7, Samira Asma-Sadeque, “‘It’s too much’: New Yorkers don masks or stay inside amid smog crisis”, in The Guardian, →ISSN

   Since the full invasion of Ukraine in 2022, Putinism[…] has arrived at what might seem an eerie equilibrium, but on a closer reading is a trap for all involved.

   2026 June 2, Michael Kimmage, “Putin Has No Good Way Out of His War”, in The New York Times, →ISSN

   Synonyms: creepy, spooky, aberrant, abnormal, alien, anomalous, as queer as Dick's hatband, bizarre

2. ScotlandFrightened, timid.

   She began to feel eerie.

   1883, George MacDonald, Donal Grant

   1 more example

   'It is my business to read the hearts o' men,' said the other. 'And who may ye be?' said Heriotside, growing eerie.

   1902, John Buchan, The Outgoing of the Tide

plural eeries

1. An eerie creature or thing.

   I tell you it's weirdsville down there, a spaced-out botanical Twilight Zone of creepies, crawlies, eeries, and ghastlies.

   2013, Robert Silverberg, “A Science-Fiction Garden”, in Reflections and Refractions

   3 more examples

   Other of these terrible Eeries began now to congregate beneath the canoe, taking courage by the example of their cowardly companion, all alike curious about this charming visitant in the upper world.

   1880, Charles Martin Newell, Kalani of Oahu: An Historical Romance of Hawaii, page 255

   Just a couple of eeries looking to get squamous, to swipe a little snatch of wholesome fun from the funktacular funerary fundament belonging to the Big Boss, a hit big enough to drop our brains out the bottoms of our various appendages and forget the essential, unalterable, sanity-shearing truth of our watery and unfleeling cosmos: R'lyeh sucks.

   2017 September/October, Catherynne M. Valente, “Down and Out in R'lyeh”, in Uncanny Magazine, number 18, page 41

   If circumstances were even slightly different, I would allow my eeries to descend upon you and do as they pleased. After what your two friends caused here the last time, you're lucky I'm managing to hold them back at all.

   2021, Steve Conoboy, Refrain Of The Fallen

plural eeries

1. alternativeAlternative spelling of eyrie.

   I'm not sure, indeed, that we didn't scare the eagles from their eeries; at all events we thought we did.

   1884, Gordon Stables, O'er Many Lands, on Many Seas, page 114

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   They hang suspended over precipices, these rocky eeries of grim birds of prey that bequeath their appetite for murder and loot to their brood.

   1910, Hans Adolf Erwein Max graf von Königsmarck, P. H. Oakley Williams, A German Staff Officer in India

   Of the heavenly azure, and of the eeries suspended on the highest rocks they had indeed heard something, but they had never seen them, and in spite of their wishes it was no longer the old keen home-sickness of the old eagles.

   1912 December, Joseph Stutzin, “The Children of the Eagle”, in Israel Goldberg, transl., The Maccabæan: A Magazine of Jewish Life and Letters, volume 22, number 6, page 184

   What was it that had driven them forth from their wooded mountain eeries to wait and watch for that one short moment, when the figure of an old man clad in a plain black military tunic would become visible at the saloon-window of a crawling train, to watch a wrinkled hand wave a fleeting greeting?

   1914, Walter Bloem, The Iron Year, page 78

   But his army reached Buñola at the head of the pass, and at once, like a whirlwind, the Moors swept down from their eeries and gave battle.

   1932, Nina Larrey Duryea, Mallorca the Magnificent, page 26