déjà vu
Already seen this
Déjà vu is the eerie sensation that you've experienced something before, even though you know you haven't.
The French phrase means "already seen." The feeling is fleeting—a moment of disorientation where the present feels like a memory: I had the strangest déjà vu walking into that room.
The term extends loosely to genuinely repetitive situations: Another budget crisis? Déjà vu.
Knowledge through experience
- recognitionPerceiving something as known
- memoryMind's retention capacity
- recallMemory retrieval act
- recollectionRecalled mental image
flashback · reminiscence · nostalgia · premonition · intuition · impression · cognition · perception
Brain section for hearing
- epilepsyBrain disorder causing seizures
- seizureForcible taking or convulsion
- brainSeat of cognition
- glitchMinor system fault
misfiring · synapse · hippocampus · cortex · phenomenon · anomaly · illusion · hallucination
familiarity
Knowledge through experience
- recognitionPerceiving something as known
- memoryMind's retention capacity
- recallMemory retrieval act
recollection · flashback · reminiscence · nostalgia · premonition · intuition · impression · cognition · perception · awareness
temporal lobe
Brain section for hearing
glitch · misfiring · synapse · hippocampus · cortex · phenomenon · anomaly · illusion · hallucination · neuropsychology
- recallingremembering, reminiscing, flashback, memorizing, recognition
- temporal shiftsflashback, time travel, rewind, fast forward, time skip
déjà vujamais vu
Familiar seeming suddenly strange
unfamiliarity · defamiliarization · estrangement · alienation · derealization
déjà vunovelty
Quality of being original
freshness · newness · discovery · unfamiliarity · virgin territory