canny

canny

by Paul Niquette

canny adj. 1. Having or showing knowledge and skill in applying it; fully competent. {Not to be confused with clever, which is not always an attractive quality.} 2. Assiduous in the safekeeping and advancement of one’s interests {Selfish, approaching cynical.}; shrewd. 3. Attentive to all factors and considerations; prudent. {In the extreme, risk-averse.} 4. Susceptible of human understanding; explicable; natural. {Possibly unnatural, as in sophisticated.} 5a. Pleasant, attractive. 5b Gentle; mild; steady. [From can (to know how, to be able) {Therefore opposite to can't-y}.]

-- The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language
{with author’s comments added in braces}

"Which reminds me: Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority made an exceptionally clever decision not to provide public restrooms. Uncanny!"
-- Paul Niquette in solution to Groaner of the Third Kind

Some words get stretched beyond their elastic limits and lose their strength. Others, curiously, take on opposite meanings. “Software Does Not Fail" complains that the word oversight, like cleave, can cut both ways ("split apart" or "cling together"). As "watchful care," the word oversight is at its best; meanwhile, as an "unintended omission," even one oversight can result in disaster. This observation inspired the author to coin undersight to replace oversight in contexts where the distinction really matters (commercial aviation comes first to mind).

Another case in that point...

inflammable adj. 1. Tending to ignite easily and burn rapidly; flammable. 2. Quickly or easily aroused to strong emotion; passionate (dare we use the word hot?)
flammable adj. Easily ignitable and capable of burning with great rapidity; highly combustible; inflammable.

Flammable and inflammable are alike in meaning and interchangeable in literal usage. One can speak of a flammable fluid or of an inflammable one, both drawn from the same vessel. Figuratively, one can refer to an inflammable temperament, but not to a flammable one. Flammable is especially appropriate where the term serves as a warning (signage on a tank truck, for example). Flammable is less susceptible to confusion than inflammable, which is sometimes mistaken for nonflammable or noncombustible.

The meanings for canny span all the way from competent (sense 1) through shrewd and prudent (senses 2 and 3) to the gentle realms owned by words like attractive and steady (sense 5). Uncanny bumps into canny, not as an opposite (incompetent, for example) but at an oblique angle, with the meaning of keen and perceptive -- so much so as to seem preternatural, taking the usage of uncanny into unearthly territories occupied by eerie and weird.

Unearthly literally means so strange as to suggest something that is not of this world; in popular usage it is sometimes applied, like weird, to what is merely exceptionally odd or far fetched.
Eerie describes something that inspires fear, uneasiness, inspiring wonder that cannot be explained rationally and therefore suggesting the preternatural or sinister.
Weird means mysterious in the sense of occult; weird applies to what is bizarre, grotesque, eccentric, or markedly unconventional. Adolescent slang has appropriated weird alongside awesome to signify intense desirability -- a synonym for whatever the ubiquitous cool is supposed to mean (“That rock concert was so weird”).

The word uncanny also refers to what is extremely puzzling, as in the opening pun, which reports an inconvenient truth discovered by its author during an unforgettable journey below the streets of the nation's capital in 1995.

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