Is there a word or phrase for the feeling you get after looking at a word for too long?

Question

(Perhaps this only happens to me, but I doubt it.)

Sometimes after looking at a word for a while, I become convinced that it can't possibly be spelled correctly. Even after looking it up, sounding it out, and realizing that there's simply no other way to spell the word, it still looks wrong.

Is there a shorthand way to describe this feeling so that people will know what I mean without the long explanation?

Answer 1

Eureka! Ok, so it's not a single word, but it's what I was trying to think of:

Semantic Satiation

Edit: Found a languagehat discussion on this topic.

Answer 2

Based on Martha's accepted answer, I offer:

Orthographic Incredulity

Answer 3

Based on this NGram... ...I'm tempted to suggest semantic satiation is a 'failed coinage'.

Personally I think it's misleading to imply the phenomenon is restricted to the issue of semantics in the first place. In my experience it's not so much that the word 'loses its meaning'. It's more a matter of saying that almost any word tends to become 'unusual' if you concentrate on it too long, even while you remain perfectly well aware of what the word actually means.

So given that Leon Jakobovits James's 1962 coinage doesn't exactly seem to have taken off (many of the later usages being simply references to his anyway), I think it would be better to call it

lexical fatigue (or saturation, as used in olfactory/auditory/visual contexts).

This at least has the benefit of making it clear that it's caused by form of the word itself, not the meaning (which may not even be particularly involved).

Answer 4

The article on semantic satiation led me to the French term jamais vu, which I think I like better for a couple reasons. It seems to apply better to the written form as described in the original question, and also I find it more fun to say.

Answer 5

This is a fantastic question. I have often experienced that feeling. I doubt that there is a succinct word or phrase to describe it. I suggest you coin your own word and use it all over the place until it finds its way into a dictionary.

In general, when you say or look at a word too many times /too long the word loses the affiliation it has with its meaning. It starts to be nothing more than a group of noises coming out of your voice-box or a collection of alphabets arranged on a page. I had someone once describe the feeling to me as word-dissolution because to him the word simply dissolved. The brain has already understood and processed the word. Now it knows everything there is to know about the word, and has moved on.

Answer 6

This is probably a self-induced form of aphasia or dysphasia.

Answer 7

Orthographic cognitive dissonance might work. The conflicting ideas held simultaneously being that the word you're looking at is spelled correctly and that it's spelled incorrectly.