Mind & EmotionGreek → English
Synesthesia
/ˌsɪnəsˈθiːʒə/noun
A condition in which one sense automatically triggers another, so that letters carry colours or sounds have shapes.
The Greek roots
σύν
sýn
together, with
αἴσθησις
aísthēsis
perception, sensation
Literally: “perceiving together”
The story of the word
Francis Galton described people who see numbers in fixed colours in 1880, and the Greek name settled on the phenomenon in the 1890s. The pairings are involuntary and stay stable for life, which is how researchers separate real synesthetes from people using metaphor. αἴσθησις, perception, is the root of aesthetic, and its negative gives anaesthesia, the state of perceiving nothing at all.
- How it travelled
- Ancient Greek → scientific coinage → English
- First recorded
- 1890s
Same family
anaesthesiaaesthetickinesthesiasynthesissymphony
In a sentence
For her, Tuesday has been dark green since childhood, a textbook case of synesthesia.