You know when something's on the tip of your tongue and — as frustrating as it is — you'd prefer to try and think of it rather than look it up? There should be a word for that.

HonoraryMancunian@lemmy.world to Showerthoughts@lemmy.world – 115 points –

Looking it up just kinda feels like cheating, y'know? Or at least throwing in the towel.

31

There's probably a word for it in German or Swedish. I bet it's long and hard to pronounce, maybe with a non-English pronunciation symbol.

Google translate says "Zungenspitze" is the German word for "tip of tongue".

There isn't one in German.

I don't believe you.

Let me rephrase that: I never heard one. There is a word for tip of the tongue but not for the concrete situation OP described. I mean the possibility to just look up stuff wherever you are is a very recent development so it makes sense that a word that incorporates this isn't invented yet.

Still don't believe you. Just smash a sentence together or whatever y'all do. We need you. Latin doesn't do this.

I invented one for you:

Zungenspitzendilemma, das

When you have something stuck at the tip of your tongue, but looking it up feels like cheating.

We're best friends now. Do another one: "when an Internet stranger connects with you over an infinitesimally small and unlikely shared idea or experience, and for the first time in your life, you don't feel alone on an earth with 7 billion humans, and you have a best friend"

sometimes it's something that can't be looked up like a song tune or a scene from a show. i tried searching once using humming and it didn't work, but thankfully it only took a couple days for me to remember where it was from

Once, I had a song in my head that I wasn't able to remember much about. I posted on the /r/tipofmytongue community, letting them know that all I could remember was "eh, oppah"

After a few incorrect guesses, somebody realized that it was Moby's "Natural Blues"

Definitely the worst part of being a post rock fan, or I guess a fan of any instrumental music.

Generally it is literally called a “tip-of-the-tongue” state in psych literature. Presque vu is the “fancy” french term for it, and means almost seen, similar to deja vu (already seen).

E: as a sidenote, I am fairly sure Vsauce had a video on this.

I thought the post title was a joke. Like you couldn't remember the word you were thinking of to describe when you can't think of a word.

Is there a word for when there's a word that's on the tip of your tongue but it turns out the word doesn't actually exist?

I’m partial the term ‘wonder kill’ for when one does look it up.

I always experience a phenomenon in which no matter how hard I wrack my brain trying to think of the thing that's on the tip of my tongue, as soon as I go to look it up or ask somebody, it suddenly comes to my mind right before they tell me the answer.

Happens to me often with wordle. I take a screenshot to send my friend and show her that I'm stuck, and for some reason right after I send it, the answer comes to me.

Yes it happens to you too, isn't it a weird phenomenon??

like I wouldn't be surprised if I could even predict the lottery Powerball numbers a fraction of a second before they are called out LOL

Sounds like it could be called "trivial pursuit"