New year, new category. Word of the Day! I’m excited.

I could conceivably do this post *every* day, but I imagine I already annoy too many of you with the whole werd-nerd penchant. I also considered “Word of the Week,” but I don’t want to be chained to any particular subject on a regular basis. So this is my compromise: “word of the day, whatever day it happens to be.”

Today’s WotD: uncanny. According to Harper-Collins, it is “characterized by apparently supernatural wonder, horror[.]” American Heritage lists the definition as “Peculiarly unsettling, as if of supernatural origin or nature; eerie.”

It’s a fun one because of its openness to context. It can be used in both positive and negative lights:

She was a girl of uncanny beauty.
He bore an uncanny resemblance to Jeffrey Dahmer.

I personally like 19th-century psychiatrist Ernst Jentsch’s take on its meaning: a psychological instance where something is familiar, yet foreign at the same time, resulting in a feeling of it being uncomfortably strange.

Uncomfortably strange. That sums up my feelings about how short was the time span from the last time I had to put on tap shoes, to the current time. Uncanny, I tell ya.

Happy Monkday. Pretend you’re fine with it.