dysnomia

See also: Dysnomia

English

Noun

dysnomia (countable and uncountable, plural dysnomias)

1. (medicine, pathology) Anomic aphasia, a condition affecting the memory that impairs the recall of words or names.

   Synonyms: amnesic aphasia, amnestic aphasia, nominal aphasia

   • 2013, Annette Kujawski Taylor, Dysnomia, entry in Annette Kujawski Taylor (editor), Encyclopedia of Human Memory, ABC-CLIO (Greenwood), page 404,

     Dysnomia is a disorder in which a person has difficulty naming people or objects. Some sources consider it a milder form of anomia, which is a type of aphasia, or disorder of language. Dysnomia seems to be more clearly memory related and specifically related to a retrieval deficit. Presented with an object, most people who suffer from dysnomia can describe the object, talk about how it can be used, and what category of objects it falls into. However, they are unable to come up with the name for it.

2. (neurology, psychology, developmental psychology) Impaired or deficient ability to recall words or names.
   • 1989, J. P. Mohr, Manual of Clinical Problems in Neurology, Little, Brown, page 315,

     Dysnomia refers to a large group of children who talk and understand well but have difficulty with word retrieval. […] Dysnomia is a well-established antecedent to stuttering or stammering.

3. (countable) An incident of a person not recalling a word or name.
   • 1977, J. Gordon Millichap (editor), Learning Disabilities and Related Disorders, Year Book Medical Publishers, page 49,

     Though we have no statistical data to back it up, our impression has been that medication prescribed for a child's behavioral problems, or for seizure control, sometimes have a stabilizing effect on these episodic dysnomias.

   • 1984, H.-J. Bandmann, R. Breit, E. Perwein (editors), Klinefelter's Syndrome, Springer, unnumbered page,

     The delay in speech and language development, especially expressive function with auditory discrimination, dysnomias, word-finding difficulties, etc. implies that these children, especially in school situations, have difficulties in verbalizing experiences, as well as in reading and writing.

   • 2012, Roberta F. White, Frederic E. Rose, The Boston Process Approach, Gerald Goldstein, Theresa M. Incagnoli (editors), Contemporary Approaches to Neuropsychological Assessment, Plenum Press, page 183,

     For this reason we have developed an ancillary 40-item naming test, the Diamond Naming Test (DNT) (Diamond, Diamond, & White, 1987), using lower frequency names to explore subtle dysnomias in such subjects (items include targets such as andirons).

Related terms

• anomia

See also

• lethologica
• on the tip of one's tongue
• wordfinding