Mind & EmotionGreek → English
Anomia
/əˈnoʊmiə/noun
Difficulty retrieving words, especially names of things, while comprehension stays intact.
The Greek roots
ἀ-
a-
not, without
ὄνομα
ónoma
name
Literally: “without a name”
The story of the word
Anomia is the failure to reach a word you certainly know: the patient describes a comb, mimes combing, and cannot get to comb. It sits at the mild end of the aphasias and is common after a left-hemisphere stroke. Do not confuse it with anomie, Durkheim's word for a society that has lost its shared norms, which comes from νόμος, law, and is a different word entirely.
- How it travelled
- Ancient Greek → medical coinage → English
Same family
anonymoussynonympseudonymeponymonomatopoeia
In a sentence
Six months after the stroke the anomia only shows up under time pressure.
She works round the anomia by talking her way toward the word.