(a.) Beyond of different from what is natural, or according to the regular course of things, but not clearly supernatural or miraculous; strange; inexplicable; extraordinary; uncommon; irregular; abnormal; as, a preternatural appearance; a preternatural stillness; a preternatural presentation (in childbirth) or labor.
Example Sentences:
(1) At the time she was preternaturally calm, though she did find her composure sometimes slipped at the hospital.
(2) Like Clinton and Reagan, he has been credited with being a formidably effective communicator, described as having "a preternatural gift for making the complex seem deceptively simple".
(3) The 52-year-old former teacher is portrayed in China as a sort of home-grown Donald Trump – ultra-ambitious and preternaturally gifted at navigating the country's vast network of "guanxi", or personal connections.
(4) Phyllis Dorothy James was born in Oxford in 1920 – a year that's doubly celebrated by crime aficionados, since it also heralded the dawning of the Golden Age of detective fiction , that interwar flowering of intricately plotted mysteries, in which the preternaturally shrewd detective is invited to pick his way through a liberal scattering of clues and red herrings, before confronting reader and murderer with his irrefutable conclusions in the final pages.
(5) "Ah just want to sort out the funeral," she blubbed at the preternaturally patient Chesney, overbite quivering like a hovercraft as the prospect of another 15 years of storylines involving the widow whimpering in her HMP Plot Device netball bib lumbered horrifyingly into view.
(6) Fecal diversion is ensured by a preternatural anus.
(7) But Lawrence's still, graceful performance as the preternaturally strong-willed teenager doggedly juggling the multiple roles she has been forced into – her siblings' mother, her mother's carer, her father's replacement – is so intriguing and emotionally compelling that you're likely to emerge feeling unexpectedly warmed up.
(8) April Bloomfield is small, preternaturally cheerful, and extremely single-minded.
(9) A paragon of common sense to supporters and a xenophobic sophist to critics, Peters, who is part Maori, is a "preternaturally charming old-stager", according to Jane Clifton, a political columnist for the weekly NZ Listener magazine.
(10) But though the naked mole rats do not immediately impress with grace and beauty, there are plenty of other characteristics in which they are almost preternaturally evolved; traits including extraordinary longevity and the apparent ability to avoid cancerous tumours, qualities that might yet make them man's best friend.
(11) For eight years, we have been represented by an elegant, well-spoken, funny, highly educated, moderate, morally upright, preternaturally calm black man.
(12) The most careful surgical technique, the guiding principles of which are outlined, is a prerequisite for the subsequent possibilities for correct care of preternatural anus and for preventing otherwise unavoidable complications.
(13) After his undergraduate degree - George Monbiot, a flatmate, remembers him being preternaturally collected and focused - Ferguson did postgraduate work at Oxford and then Cambridge, keeping himself financially afloat by writing leaders for the Daily Telegraph and book reviews for the Daily Mail under assumed names, before becoming a fellow, then professor of history at Oxford.
(14) It’s rather strange, swapping the craziness of the Edinburgh’s Royal Mile at festival time for the preternatural quiet of the Scottish parliament in early August: like being thrown out of a party.
(15) A more comprehensive organization of those with preternatural anus within the framework of the German Ilco and the establishment of preternatural anus clinics and therapists would be desirable.
(16) The effect of Xantinol nicotinate and of hyperosmolar solution upon colonic motility of man was examined in five patients with tranverse preternatural anus by means of intraluminal tonometry.
(17) Once the stage of extraperitoneal evasion of the sigmoid has been achieved for definitive preternatural anus, transsection is made of the aponeurosis of m. obliqu.
(18) Incontinence and incontinence of the preternatural anus were eliminated in the first operations using autologous autotransplanted sphincteroplasties.
(19) On a sunny morning in mid-July, Malalai School for Girls in Kabul is preternaturally quiet.
(20) The intervention in 18 patients was modified Gabriel's operation, in four patients combined with the modified method of sphincterolevatorplasty and in 4 patients--preternatural anus.
Uncanny
Definition:
(a.) Not canny; unsafe; strange; weird; ghostly.
Example Sentences:
(1) Hamilton said it was uncanny to find themselves in another desperate emergency situation almost exactly one year on.
(2) Many claims made against them echo with uncanny precision those once made against Jews and Catholics.
(3) Here, too, Capote displayed uncanny journalistic skills, capturing even the most languid and enigmatic of subjects – Brando in his pomp – and eliciting the kinds of confidences that left the actor reflecting ruefully on his "unutterable foolishness".
(4) Not only were all the paraphernalia and substances depicted with uncanny accuracy rare on television but the reactions of the drugged executives were also utterly credible.
(5) The English riots were described as a tidal wave of copycat disorder that swept across towns and cities with uncanny repetition.
(6) As a portrait of modern society, it is startlingly astute – a scene with two schoolgirls arguing at a bus stop is uncanny in its depiction of south London slang, and speech mannerisms, and all the more notable because this is so rarely done accurately and with empathy.
(7) "But am I alone in thinking that David Moyes is beginning to bear an uncanny resemblance to Frank Spencer?"
(8) Although the soloists change, the basic orchestration continues creating an uncanny sense of déjà entendu.
(9) GP Sounders stuck in the long grass There’s something uncanny about watching games this year at CenturyLink Field, replete with freshly laid field turf of the variety Portland Timbers also use (though you suspect that wasn’t considered as a particularly attractive selling point by the Sounders hierarchy).
(10) Resulting from old cleaning ceremonies and preventing or treating uncanny effects in children, it was been usual to lick forehead of newborn and children crosswise.
(11) Of course the Sunday People couldn't help investigate some of these claims and took "The Test in Bucharest" – they managed to find "a dead ringer for Pippa" and a young woman with "an uncanny likeness to Kate", both of whom had "excellent English".
(12) Bacillus Calmette-Guérin has demonstrated an uncanny capacity for effectiveness as therapy for human diseases.
(13) But while he has shown an uncanny ability to be flexible – in recent weeks he has softened his rhetoric dramatically – few believe he will be able to change enough to satisfy creditors when debt-stricken Athens re-engages in gruelling negotiations to stay afloat.
(14) They call it the “uncanny valley” – the point at which humans become uneasy at a robot’s humanness.
(15) Tom Watson is a formidable political operator with an uncanny knack for being at the centre of Labour party dramas.
(16) When it was opened more than a century ago, however, the Chhatrapati Shivaji railway terminus, which bears an uncanny resemblance to London's St Pancras, was the T2 of its time.
(17) Some way further down the list is Woodford Investment Management, run by Neil Woodford, a figure held in awe in London for his uncanny ability to make money.
(18) Blair has long been fascinated by the "uncanny" parallels between New Labour and the Liberal Party of Campbell-Bannerman and Asquith (his summer reading in 1996, during a holiday at Geoffrey Robinson's Tuscan villa, was George Dangerfield's classic The Strange Death of Liberal England).
(19) Although his playing days with Chelsea and Tottenham are long over, the uncanny knack of undoing Newcastle has clearly survived Poyet's transition from pitch to technical area undiminished.
(20) Reading between the lines, in the context of the Spurs' almost uncanny teamwork in these last two games, what James is really telling his team-mates is that they have to be more like the Spurs.