On Wednesday my wife came across the word atavism in Out of Africa that she did not know the meaning of. I did not recognise the word and did not know what it meant. So we looked it up and found out.
Then on Thursday I was reading an article on the Guardian (http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/oct/23/worship-children-brings-misery-suzanne-moore) and saw the word atavistic. I cannot for the life of me recall seeing this word ever before, and here it pops up shortly after finding out what it meant.
I am sure this phenomenon has happened before - where I learn something new (usually the meaning of a word that I have never seen before, or name of a place or person) and then the very shortly afterwards see it being used. (This also happened to me this year with quinoa.)
Is there a name for this phenomenon? Or is it just me that this happens to?
