• deja vu •
Pronunciation: day-zhah-vu • Hear it!
Part of Speech: Noun, mass
Meaning: 1. The sense that you are seeing or otherwise experiencing something that has happened before. 2. The sense of boredom at having seen or experienced something too many times.
Notes: Since today's word is a recent borrowing from French—a phrase at that—it is a lexical orphan with no derivational family. Because it is a mass noun, it doesn't even have a plural form. Some people even prefer to keep the exact French spelling, which is déjà vu with the diacritics. They are not necessary, however.
In Play: The most famous use of today's word, of course, was the redundancy by New York Yankees baseball player and coach, Yogi Berra: "It's like deja vu all over again." In the US the word is currently taking on a new sense of "annoyance from repetition". Acceptance of this shift is up to you: "Your requests for advances on your allowance are becoming deja vu, son."
Word History: Today's Good Word is actually a French phrase borrowed intact into English. In French déjà vu means, unsurprisingly, "already seen". Vu is the past participle of French voir "to see", the natural descendant of Latin videre "to see" (whence English video, which means "I see" in Latin). In English, the same root that gave vid- in Latin, became wit and wise in English, you see. And if you go to see someone, you visit them, don't you? Visit is another relative. The root remained unchanged in Celtic, where vid meant "seer". So the compound dru-wid (druid) meant "strong seer". (We hope that Bonnie Sides let us experience déjà vu in the future by suggesting more Good Words like today's.)
DEJA VU
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DEJA VU
• The Good Dr. Goodword
The connection of the verb part of the phrase to visit is an interesting one. When one experiences deja vu as in the first definition, the feeling often is much more like revisiting an entire experience than like just seeing it again.
I have experienced deja vu an many occasions; where usually the first experience was in a dream and the second in waking life. Unfortunately, the prescient dreams never seem to contain any really useful information such as stock tips, lottery numbers or even how to avoid any negative events. Ah well, you only live once...or do you?
I have experienced deja vu an many occasions; where usually the first experience was in a dream and the second in waking life. Unfortunately, the prescient dreams never seem to contain any really useful information such as stock tips, lottery numbers or even how to avoid any negative events. Ah well, you only live once...or do you?
"Time is nature's way of keeping everything from happening all at once. Lately it hasn't been working."
Anonymous
Anonymous
Re: DEJA VU
[I added the missing definiton...]
Meaning: 1. The sense that you are seeing or otherwise experiencing something that has happened before. 2. The sense of boredom at having seen or experienced something too many times. 3. A déjà vu is usually a glitch in the Matrix. It happens when they change something..
-gailr
Like Perry, I experience this quite often, but never about anything really useful. I also have a feeling of déjà vu when I am composing music, sometimes... and then I wonder if I am stealing someone else's work that I previously had heard.
At those times I think how exciting it must have been for Hector Berlioz, to know that he was truly innovative!
-Tim
At those times I think how exciting it must have been for Hector Berlioz, to know that he was truly innovative!
-Tim
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- Great Grand Panjandrum
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Re: DEJA VU
You forgot:[I added the missing definiton...]
Meaning: . . . 3. A déjà vu is usually a glitch in the Matrix. It happens when they change something..
-gailr
Happens quite a lot when you work for the Government.deja moo--the feeling you've heard all this bull before.
Regards//Larry
"To preserve liberty, it is essential that the whole body of the people always possess arms, and be taught alike, especially when young, how to use them."
-- Attributed to Richard Henry Lee
"To preserve liberty, it is essential that the whole body of the people always possess arms, and be taught alike, especially when young, how to use them."
-- Attributed to Richard Henry Lee
Re: DEJA VU
Is that why, when I asked my mom what she really did for a living she replied, "If I tell ya, I'll have to kill ya."? Needless to say, I left that one alone.Happens quite a lot when you work for the Government.
"What lies behind us and what lies ahead of us are tiny matters compaired to what lies inside us." R.W.E.
Re: DEJA VU
Not just the government, Larry; this applies equally well to the running (and sometimes sleeping) dogs of capitalism.You forgot:Happens quite a lot when you work for the Government.deja moo--the feeling you've heard all this bull before.
-gailr
I think you may have a point there, she claims to be in "Waste Management".Your mom's job must be fairly low level security clearance. We would have to kill you just for asking the question.
BTW: Sorry for the delay in response, but we here in Middle GA have a visitor that happens to be dumping a lot of rain on us, so I felt the urge to read a book. It looks like things are only going to get worse- sorry, totally irrelevant
"What lies behind us and what lies ahead of us are tiny matters compaired to what lies inside us." R.W.E.
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