Jamais vu

        A friend once mentioned that some words begin to look strange when they are uttered in repetition. I too, have experienced that phenomenon not through utterance alone but also through contemplation. For instance, I hear a word and it echoes in my head, repeatedly, until it loses all vestiges of meaning. Recently, I learned the term for such phenomenon is jamais vu.

        According to Wikipedia, a word has three characteristics: it has a form or a shape, which is a composite of sounds or characters (when written); it has a function, which is how the word operates in a meaningful sentence (i.e. as a noun); and it has a meaning, which is the concept the word represents.

        When one repeats a word continuously, one is merely repeating its form. Initially, one is aware of the word’s function and meaning but without a sentence, the word loses its function. Without a sentence, there is also no context, and thus, the word loses its meaning.

********

        In psychology, jamais vu is said to be the opposite of déjà vu. While déjà vu is the perception that a present event has already occurred in the past, jamais vu is the perception that a past event is happening for the first time. A common experience would be someone not recognizing a place or a person that is already known.

        Jamais vu literally means “never seen” in French while déjà vu means “already seen”. A related term, presque vu, the “it’s -at-the-tip-of-my-tongue” phenomenon, translates as “almost seen”.

~ by absolute0 on March 4, 2009.