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Unco

Dialect
Pronunciation

Understanding ARPABET Pronunciation

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The pronunciation guide uses the ARPABET phonetic system—the same system used in speech recognition and text-to-speech applications.

Vowel Examples:
AE1 = cat, bat
EH1 = bed, head
IY1 = see, me
OW1 = go, boat
UW1 = boot, do
Stress Numbers:
0 = no stress (unstressed)
1 = primary stress (loud)
2 = secondary stress (medium)
Example:
AH0 TH IY1 N AH0
= a-THEE-na (Athena)

The stressed syllable (marked with 1) is pronounced louder and clearer than others.

Quick Definition

Strange, remarkable, or uncanny; also used as an intensifier meaning "very" or "extremely."

Detailed Definition
"Unco" is one of the most versatile and philosophically interesting words in Scots, moving between "strange," "remarkable," "very," and "uncanny." Burns's "unco guid" — the self-righteously virtuous — uses it with devastating irony to describe those whose goodness has become alienated from human reality. In poems of the supernatural and the strange, "unco" marks the boundary between the familiar and the unsettling. The word's root meaning of "unknown" gives it existential depth, and it is one of the richest single words in the Scottish poetic tradition.
Example
Example in poetry:
Burns uses "unco" famously in "Address to the Unco Guid" meaning the excessively righteous, but the word means strange, unusual, or remarkably; A poet might write: "The unco stillness before the storm — / a silence past all common norm." for atmospheric tension; "She wore an unco look that day — / as if she'd come frae far away." marks psychological distance; "The unco guid sit in their pew — / and judge the rest for what they do." echoes Burns's satire directly; "An unco chance had brought them here — / two strangers wi' nae reason clear." uses the word for strange coincidence; "Unco the grace of the human face — / each one a world without a trace." uses the word to express wonder at human individuality; "He spoke wi' unco force that day — / the kind of speech that doesna fade away." uses the word for remarkable oratory
Additional Notes
Unco is among the most semantically rich words in Scots, functioning simultaneously as adjective (strange, remarkable), intensifier (very, extremely), and noun (a strange person or thing, news from elsewhere). Burns uses it memorably in "Address to the Unco Guid" — the smugly virtuous — where it does multiple simultaneous work: these people are strange in their rigid virtue, remarkable in their self-righteousness, and distant from ordinary human experience. The word's connection to "uncouth" in its original sense (unknown, unfamiliar) reminds us that strangeness and moral severity can be connected: those who are "unco guid" have made themselves strangers to ordinary human weakness, and that estrangement is its own failing.
Also Known As
Very Remarkably Strange
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