Word Satiation

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, Martha. Hi, Grant. My name is Sam Lee from San Diego.

Hello, Sam.

Hi, Sam. What’s going on?

Well, I have a question that’s been bugging me for a few years. Well, actually, longer than that. But every so often, I’ll see a word that I know is spelled correctly, but in that moment, it just seems to be spelled wrong.

For example, one time I was driving down the road, I saw a stop sign, and I could swear the word stop looked wrong. And more recently, I was looking at a webpage, and I saw the word pediatrics. And I know in my head that it’s spelled right. I know that it’s right. It just looks to my eye wrong just in that moment. Is there a name for this phenomenon?

I am not a doctor. I thought this might be a question for a psychologist, but, you know.

Well, this is something I’ve come across a little bit in some of the books that I have. There’s a general overall term for the inability to understand words or speech. And it’s used in a lot of different ways with a lot of different modifiers. And it’s aphasia, A-P-H-A-S-I-A, aphasia. And so what you’ll find often is that doctors will describe it as a type of aphasia. And so that allows it to be more specific.

In this case, it might be something like a receptive aphasia, which is the inability to understand written or spoken language. The problem here is that these terms, and I have others, they tend to be used to describe ongoing conditions and not momentary conditions.

Yeah, and some kind of pathology.

Yeah, you need a way to indicate that it’s occasional or temporary. And maybe you could call it occasional receptive aphasia. And maybe a doctor would say, okay, I get that. I understand that that’s what that is. I don’t know. But without being a doctor, I’m not 100% sure. But the reason I offer you the word aphasia is that is a great word to use to look up in the text to see if you can find out more information about this and find out if there’s a legitimate term.

All right.

Well, you know, Sam, I mean, Grant from time to time uses his gnarly foot theory. I like that just as well.

Yeah. Do you know that one, Sam?

No.

That’s if you stare at a word long enough, it begins to look wrong.

Yeah, I come across that when you see a list of the same word, like that word pediatrics. It was just a whole page of that word just coming after names. And as I kept looking down the line, it started looking more wrong and wrong and wronger.

Yeah, there were a few others, a few other words, akatamathesia, A-C-A-T-A-M-A-T-H-E-S-I-A. And this is from a Greek word meaning a thorough understanding. It’s a form of aphasia, and it also means a loss of understanding or an absence of a response to, say, something that you’re looking at or something that you’re listening to. But the problem with that is it’s usually a result of a psychotic disturbance.

Oh, that’s comforting.

I don’t think we’re talking about that.

Well, you know, as long as your psychosis is only lasting, you know, a half a second or so, you’re fine, right?

Yeah, exactly. You know, maybe there’s someone listening who can give us a more specific word for this.

Oh, sure. We have doctors in the audience. I know we do.

We do. Is there a doctor in the audience? Let me know.

All right.

Thank you.

Thanks for calling, Sam.

Thank you, Sam. Bye-bye.

Bye.

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