uncanny valley

un·can·ny val·ley

U u

Definition of uncanny valley words

noun uncanny valley a psychological concept that describes the feelings of unease or revulsion that people tend to have toward artificial representations of human beings, as robots or computer animations, that closely imitate many but not all the features and behaviors of actual human beings. the dip in positive feelings toward such artificial representations. 1

before 1970

One of the 2% newest English words

1970; coined by Japanese roboticist Masahiro Mori from Japanese bukimi no tani (genshō) “uncanny valley (phenomenon)”

noun

adjective

verb

adverb

pronoun

preposition

conjunction

determiner

exclamation

A common word. It’s meaning is known to most children of preschool age. About 87% of English native speakers know the meaning and use the word.

Most Europeans know this English word. The frequency of it’s usage is somewhere between "mom" and "screwdriver".

This diagram is provided by Google Ngram Viewer

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