Unchancy is an adjective one doesn't hear very often nowadays, but not long ago it was widely used in Ireland, Scotland and the shires of northern England. It means unlucky, ill-omened, ill-fated; unfortunate. Stevenson, in Catriona (1893) has, 'The devil any other sight or sound in that unchancy place.' Spence's Folk Lore, published in 1899, has this from Shetland: 'The sign of the cross was considered an antidote against the intended evil; and the spittle an emphatic expression of contempt for the unchancy hag.' Our own Jane Barlow in Martin's Complaint (1896) has, That was a rail unchancy thing to go happen a body.' A Yorkshire writer, Wray, in 1876 refers to 'a cluster of small tumble-down cottages, whose forlorn appearance denoted the unthrifty and unchancy character of their occupants.' And another Yorkshireman, Sutcliffe, in a story called Shameless Wayne (1900), wrote, 'It seemed the folk were right when they named the day unchancy.'

The word also means mischievous; dangerously risky; not safe to meddle with. Scott in Rob Roy (1817) wrote, 'We gang-there-out Hieland bodies are an unchancy generation when you speak to us o' bondage.' Robert Burns in a poem to J. Kennedy, wrote: 'There's lasses there wad force A hermit's fancy, And down the gate in faith they're worse And mair unchancy.'

The word comes from the noun unchance, a misfortune, calamity, a word now deemed obsolete by the dialect dictionaries. The Ayrshire writer Galt, in Gilhaize (1823), wrote, 'The end of my brother's widow had been at peace, and not caused by any of those unchances which darken the latter days of so many of the pious.' Unchance is as old as The Wars of Alexander (c. 1450), which contains the line, 'That no vnchaunce thaim achefe.'

Uncanny has many meanings apart from awkward, unskilful; careless; imprudent; inconvenient. It also means unearthly, ghostly, dangerous from supernatural causes; ominous; unlucky; of a person, possessed of supernatural powers. 'You're an hawk of an uncanny nest,' wrote the Scot Pennecuik in 1787. Another meaning is harsh, unkind, rude; severe, especially used of a blow or fall. 'An uncanny copu I got for my pains,' wrote Scott in Waverley (1824).The English Dialect Dictionary has, from Northumberland, 'An uncanny fall; an uncanny knock.' Walker, an Aberdonian, has the line in Bards (1887: 'Ae day on the muir of Affort He got a most uncanny sclaffort.' A sclaffort is a slap with the open hand; a box on the ear. Imitative of the sound made by such a blow, the Scots dictionaries say.