Mind & EmotionGreek → English
Agnosia
/æɡˈnoʊʒə/noun
Inability to recognise objects, faces or sounds despite working senses and intact intelligence.
The Greek roots
ἀ-
a-
without, not
γνῶσις
gnôsis
knowledge, recognition
Literally: “not knowing”
The story of the word
Freud introduced the term in 1891, in the monograph on aphasia he wrote years before psychoanalysis existed. The condition is stranger than blindness: a patient with visual agnosia can copy a drawing of a key stroke for stroke without knowing what it is, then name it the moment it is placed in the hand. Prosopagnosia, the face variant, runs in families and may touch something like two percent of people to some degree.
- How it travelled
- Ancient Greek → German → English
- First recorded
- 1890s
Same family
agnosticdiagnosisprognosisprosopagnosia
In a sentence
The agnosia was selective: he knew every tool in the shed and no vegetable in the garden.