Lethologica

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leth·o·log·i·ca

/ˌlēTHəˈläjəkə/

noun

RARE

the inability to remember a particular word or name


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The dictionary got it wrong. Lethologica is NOT rare—at least not in my personal experience. Meaning I personally experience it daily, hourly.



It means that every single night when I watch the NBC Nightly News, I struggle to remember the name of its war correspondent before he’s identified. There, I just googled it. It’s Richard Engel. And I think he’s going to have serious PTSD. He’s been on the news every night for years reporting on grotesque carnage in wars all over the world.



It means I lie awake at night trying to figure out what a Kirby is. I finally decide it’s a kind of clementine and drift off to sleep. When I get up in the morning, it doesn’t seem quite right though, so I google it. A Kirby is one of those dwarf cucumbers. I’ve eaten a million of them.



It means that for the life of me, I cannot recall the name of a friend’s stepson, so until the child’s name comes out in the course of the conversation, I have to refer to him awkwardly as “your stepson” —as if I’m emphasizing that he’s not the biological child of my friend.



What’s peculiar about my lethologica is that I’m a pretty good crossword solver and even a decent crossword constructor. In fact, my happiest times these days are the minutes I spend every morning writing a mini featuring the day’s Wordle word. My memory seems fine then. I still google, but mostly to turn up weird, little-known facts to embellish the clues.



And oddly, one word I reliably remember these days that most people don’t know to begin with is lethologica. In fact, it’s my favorite word, because having a word to describe the disordered state of my mind suggests someone else has had the same trouble—and was mentally acute enough to name it.

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