Vocabulary Words

September Writing Challenge - Prompt #14:

Vocabulary

I keep a lot of notes and lists on my phone. I'd like to think that if someone were to steal my phone, they would also be stealing my genius. Not that I want someone to steal my phone or my genius... I'd just like to think that I have genius.

One of my notes is a list of words or phrases that I like and want to remember. 

Here are a few from my list:

Semantic satiation

This is a phenomenon where you get stuck on a word, and it ceases to have meaning, and you might wonder if it's the right word. Usually you end up repeating the word several times and thinking, "Wait, is that the right word? Am I using it correctly? Do I even know what that word means?" The other day this happened to me with the word “procure.” After using the word I had a moment where I thought, “Is procure even a word at all? How do I even know that word? Procure… procure… procure…”

Frequency illusion

This is when you notice something for the first time, and then you start seeing it everywhere, creating the illusion that it's suddenly appearing more frequently. This is currently happening to me with dogs in muzzles. I don't recall seeing any muzzled dogs in my whole life (besides on TV), but a few weeks ago, I saw a person walking a muzzled dog at the park. I thought, "Wow! I've never seen a dog in a muzzle like that!" Now I see them everywhere! This happens a lot with words, too. I'll come across a word I've never heard before and suddenly it's everywhere! I remember this happening with the word macabre. After the first time reading it in a book, never having heard it before, I began coming across it in everything I read. Strangely, I never heard the word said aloud until I saw The Greatest Showman. That still remains the only time I've heard it expressed vocally (but now that I'm writing that, everyone is going to start saying it a la frequency illusion).

Pareidolia

This is the tendency to apply meaning where there is none. I used to talk about this a lot with my AP English teacher, only I didn't know there was a word for it. I would often say things like, "We sit here analyzing symbols and themes in this literature, but what if that's not what the author meant at all? What if the moon isn't actually a feminine symbol in this piece? What if the author was literally writing about THE MOON?" 

Sometimes when I listen to podcasts and commentaries on the scriptures, I think the same thing. I worry sometimes that people are trying too hard to pull meaning out of everything or change the interpretation of things, and they're really just engaging in pareidolia. 

Apophenia

Apophenia is similar to pareidolia. This is where we form connections and patterns between things when there isn't really any pattern or connection. 

One example of this I can think of is when someone eats at a restaurant and then gets sick, and they draw the conclusion that they got food poisoning from the restaurant. They could be correct, but they're just as likely to be making a connection that isn't accurate. Maybe they got sick from they're own cooking the night before. Or maybe it's a virus. 

Task fallacy (or chore fallacy)

This is a term I made up a few weeks ago to describe the phenomenon where you feel like you didn't accomplish enough when you actually did. I was talking to my friend about it, and I decided it needed a name (if it already has a name, I hope I discover it some day). 

This happens to me a lot - where, at the end of the day, I feel like I didn't get anything "done" or that I wasn't productive. Most of the time, if I think about it, I realize I actually did accomplish a lot, but the fallacy usually occurs because there isn't a visual stimulus to make me feel like I was productive. For example, if I work hard, and the house is clean at the end of the day, I have a visual stimulus to make me feel like I've been productive. I can see my work. But there are tasks like grocery shopping that need to be done but don't provide a visual stimulus that cues "productivity." Also, some tasks take a really long time, and investing in ONE three-hour task doesn't always feel as productive as completing FOUR twenty-minute tasks. Quantity can be deceiving. Hence: task fallacy. You heard it here first!