I’m looking for a shorter way to convey the meaning of The phenomenon of something being found saliently disturbing due to its imperfect similarity to (but little compatibility with) something familiar; what we would call “deep in the uncanny valley” if we were talking exclusively about visual (possibly behavioral) similarity to humans, but applicable also to other senses, and similarity to even inorganic yet familiar things
Example: mimicry in animals and plants (not the part where they fool, but the dissonance – where you know it’s not what your pattern recognition suggests)
“Uncanny-valley-like-effect” doesn’t feel sufficient.
Fields it might be good to focus on: background items in some horrors; marketing failures, culture shock…
Answer
How about just uncanny?
That plant looked uncannily liked a human
To her, the noise the bird made sounded uncannily like screaming
The word itself implies a certain sense of fear or dread
mysterious; arousing superstitious fear or dread; uncomfortably strange:
Dictionary.com
Attribution
Source : Link , Question Author : kaay , Answer Author : SGR
