In our second weekly Falcon Fact, we bring you a concept with which you are probably familiar, but never knew the name: semantic satiation.

Semantic satiation is the “physical phenomenon in which repetition causes a word or phrase to temporarily lose meaning for the listener, who then perceives the speech as repeated meaningless sounds.” This happens not only from saying the word out loud but also from staring at or analyzing the word for extended time periods. The term was first coined in 1962.

Though this may seem like a trivial phenomenon that you experience when studying for vocab tests or running lines of a script, it actually has the potential capability to be applied to personal phobias through “systemic desensitization,” or exposure therapy. In theory, repeated contact with certain words, ideas, or other phobias could help a person become less afraid of or triggered by them. Semantic satiation is also a tool used in studies of language acquisition and multilingualism. 

(You may have heard this term recently in Apple TV’s series Ted Lasso, in which Coach Beard reminds Ted of the reason why he has trouble shouting repeated orders to the players on the field.)