The word eerie descended from the Old English earg, an adjective meaning “cowardly” that itself evolved from either the Proto-Germanic adjective argaz, which meant “unmanly” or “fainthearted,” or the Proto-Indo-European verb root ergh-, which meant “to tremble or shake.” So it's understandable that when eerie first came into use during the late thirteenth century, it meant “fearful or timid.” The eighteenth-century Scottish poet and lyricist Robert Burns was the first to use the adjective in its contemporary sense of “strange and mysterious in a way that inspires uneasiness, fear, or dread,” and since it was through his influence that this became the word's primary meaning throughout the English-speaking world, it's a wee bit ironic that the Scottish still often use eerie in what is basically its original sense of “frightened or unnerved.”
©2022 Michael R. Gates
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