Uneasy is worried in a quiet way you cannot quite explain. Going back to check the door a second time; the feeling in a room where two people have just stopped arguing.
Uneasy is milder than afraid and vaguer than worried — the trouble is that something is not right, not that anything has actually happened. It takes ABOUT: "I'm uneasy about signing this today." It describes situations as well as people: an uneasy silence, an uneasy peace, an uneasy alliance between two sides who do not trust each other. The adverb turns up with small movements — he shifted uneasily in his chair — and the noun is unease. Careful: uneasy is not the opposite of easy in the sense of simple, so a hard exam is difficult, never uneasy.
1adjectiveuneasySlightly worried that something is wrong, without knowing exactly what.
“He felt uneasy about leaving the house unlocked.”
synonyms: anxious, apprehensive
2adjectivesituation(of a situation) Tense, and unlikely to last.
“The two sides kept an uneasy truce for about a month.”
3adjectivesleep(of sleep or rest) Broken and not restful.
“She spent an uneasy night listening for the phone.”
Too few real examples of this word to estimate which sense is commonest.
Also accepted in games: anxious, nervous
Uneasy is English-made: Middle English unesy, un- plus easy. Along the way it merged with an older word, unethe or uneathe, which meant "difficult, not easy". Two ideas went in, and the worried one came out on top.
Middle English
unesy
English, today
uneasy
Built from
From Middle English unesy, equivalent to un- + easy. Merged with Middle English unethe, uneathe (“difficult, not easy”). See uneath.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA