This week’s theme
There’s a word for it

This week’s words
thinko
besaiel
apophenia
anacoluthon
delphinestrian

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A.Word.A.Day

PRONUNCIATION:

(a-puh-FEE-nee-uh)

MEANING:

noun: The perception of connections or meaning in unrelated or random phenomena.

ETYMOLOGY:

From German Apophänie, from Greek apo- (away, off, apart) + phainein (to show). Earliest documented use: around 1980. Apophenia is the general term -- pareidolia is an example of apophenia.

USAGE:

“It was apophenia, which made you see the shape of a person in what were only cigarette fumes floating in the air.”
Elisabeth Sheffield; Helen Keller Really Lived: A Novel; University of Alabama Press; 2014.

See more usage examples of apophenia in Vocabulary.com’s dictionary.

A THOUGHT FOR TODAY: