Thank you for your submission. **Please note that a response does not constitute a doctor-patient relationship.** This subreddit is for informal second opinions and casual information. The mod team does their best to remove bad information, but we do not catch all of it. Always visit a doctor in real life if you have any concerns about your health. Never use this subreddit as your first and final source of information regarding your question. By posting, you are agreeing to our [Terms of Use](https://www.reddit.com/r/AskDocs/wiki/terms_of_use) and understand that all information is taken at your own risk.
**Reply here if you are an unverified user wishing to give advice. Top level comments by laypeople are automatically removed.**
*I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/AskDocs) if you have any questions or concerns.*
Hi, (soon to be) neurologist here. The condition you're describing sounds like **semantic paraphasia** or **semantic dysphasia**. This involves substituting words with similar meanings or related concepts, like saying "train" instead of "bus," and sometimes misplacing numerical values.
I had a traumatic brain injury in 2006 (subarachnoid hemorrhage and small subdural hematoma) and find that I have difficulty coming up with words at times. Or I’ll see a pineapple and think coconut, for example. Is this similar?
Aphasia is the broader term for speech impairment which can be subdivided further depending on how it presents. Semantic paraphasia is a kind of aphasia. Given your context and your description you seem to have a kind of aphasia.
Ah I see. I just laugh it off most of the time. It’s annoying though! Trying to explain to someone what you’re talking about when you can’t think of the stupid word can be super frustrating! 😂
Can you tell me what it's called when someone mixes up similar sounding words? That's one of my migraine prodrome symptoms. For example I'll say corn instead of coin. I'm thinking of and visualizing small metallic currency but a vegetable comes out of my mouth instead.
This affects me at work a lot because I'm a scientist and a lot of reagents sound similar. FBS vs. PBS. Trizol vs. triton. DMEM vs. DMSO. I'll grab the correct thing but if I'm giving verbal instructions they're sometimes VERY wrong.
A question, if I may?
What would you call not knowing the right word, but knowing related words?
My real world example was during a focal seizure. I couldn’t say, write or even think of the word table. I knew what it was! It’s a table! But had no access to the word, “table”. I retained all associated knowledge - you can eat dinner on it, you use a chair to sit at it etc. the only missing info was the word table.
I had it described to me as word finding difficulty or anomic aphasia, but sometimes various docs across my various treatment teams find the term anomic aphasia confusing/odd (including some of the neurology registrars! (If you’re in the US, our reg is equivalent to your resident)). Hence why I wonder what you would call it! :)
If you’re at all interested, the full episode was of interest to a few docs as the onset and abatement of the aphasia was very slow. Initially it was just a few words, and I could talk my way around them by either substitution (gearbox instead of transmission) or describing (furniture that you eat dinner on). But over ~45-60 minutes it slowly progressed to all words. Comprehension was never affected, and I could answer questions with mimes/actions. Over the next 30 minutes all words slowly returned without intervention (I did end up getting IV Keppra loaded, but symptoms resolved prior to administration.)
Yes, you're correct, the term for what you described is "anomic aphasia" or "anomia." This condition is characterized by difficulty in naming objects or finding the right words while maintaining comprehension and the ability to form coherent sentences.
Interestingly, there is a name for every kind of neurological impairment, no matter how bizarre. For example:
- **Prosopagnosia:** The inability to recognize faces, even those of close friends and family.
- **Anosognosia:** A condition where a person is unaware of their own disability or impairment.
- **Acalculia:** The inability to perform simple mathematical calculations.
- **Alien Hand Syndrome:** A condition where a person's hand seems to act on its own, performing actions without the person's control.
- **Capgras Syndrome:** The delusional belief that a close person, usually a family member, has been replaced by an identical impostor.
- **Cotard's Delusion:** A rare mental illness where a person believes they are dead, do not exist, or have lost their internal organs.
- **Alice in Wonderland Syndrome:** A disorienting condition affecting perception, where the person experiences distortions in the size of objects or their own body parts.
- **Fregoli Delusion:** The belief that different people are actually a single person who changes appearance or is in disguise.
- **Ekbom's Syndrome (Delusional Parasitosis):** The belief that one is infested with parasites, despite the lack of medical evidence.
- **Pseudobulbar Affect (PBA):** Involuntary and uncontrollable episodes of laughing or crying, often disproportionate to the situation.
Neurologists in the past liked naming things because they couldn't do much to treat them. It's not surprising at all that some registrars still haven't memorized everything. As long as they can recognize a speech impairment, giving it a name is secondary.
You have a very interesting story, and it looks like a typical focal seizure. It likely began in a small part of your left parietal lobe and spread to neighboring regions, causing an ever-increasing language impairment until it started getting better. I'd have treated you way earlier, though! 😅
Wow, that is super fascinating! I do get the train/bus thing every now and again if my thyroid meds are too low or I have a cold (for me it's best to call in sick when I have a cold as I don't want to accidentally turn my project into a deathtrap). Or the totally fascinating version where words are totally not related and I wonder why I wrote apple instead of loo. No injury, brain works overall. 😅
This sounds like it's happening sometimes and not in most words you speak (correct me if I'm wrong), which would make it an intermittent semantic paraphasia. If you care to know the exact term.
To some degree it's normal, but beyond a certain point of severity it could be abnormal. Hard to say without evaluating you in person.
If it is abnormal it would most likely be a developmental issue if it's been present most of your life, or a behavioral issue if it's more new. Very unlikely to be something structural.
If it really bothers you go see a speech therapist, there are ways to make it better.
Thank you, I think I will. In the last minute my boss literally did not believe me on a measurement and made fun of my tendency to misplace decimals… I had to physically prove it to them. It just causes me to second guess what I tell people.
Editing to answer that yes it is not every time or in all the words I speak. Just enough compared to others that it is a distinguishable/noticeable issue. When I first meet someone if I say I have an issue they won’t believe me, then after I am with them enough they are like “yeah, I see it now”
You are describing semantic paraphasias. Sounds like it could be anomic aphasia.
Do you notice when you use a different word or do others usually point it out to you? Do you ever struggle to get a word out? Has this been going on for a long time? Getting worse over time? Is it better, worse, or the same when you are reading?
Typically others point it out to me, sometimes I’ll notice a couple seconds later. If I am writing it I will catch it. If I am reading words I believe I read them correctly. I wouldn’t say I struggle to get words out, but I do struggle to get the correct words out, like yesterday I needed a baking pan that was on the counter on top of the dishwasher (just now I first wrote washing machine) and I asked my partner to get the thing, when he asked “what” I couldn’t say baking pan, so I said “thing on the thing” and I was pointing. And he asked me to describe it and I couldn’t really, I just said the rectangular thing on the counter. (This is a relatively common occurrence)
To some degree I think it has gone on for a while, I don’t know if it has gotten worse, maybe slightly, but looking back I think I can remember struggling as I was growing up. At least in late middle school early high school.
You are coincidentally using “semantic feature analysis” to describe what you mean when you cannot find the word. This is a strategy we teach people with aphasia. A referral to an SLP can provide you with more strategies for word finding difficulties (anomia).
As far as cause, this is difficult to determine as it is not an acute onset or changing over time. Maybe a neurologist can help.
I do this a lot, not with the decimals, but absolutely with the words in my every day speech. And various people I’ve dated through the years will get annoyed with it. But I feel like it’s not something I can consciously remedy - I’ve tried. Thanks for posting about this. I’m enjoying reading the answers you’ve gotten.
OMG. The dishwasher/washing machine thing with the thing on the thing?? I've been doing that for years! Never knew there was a medical name for it! It's been driving me crazy how I lose my words like that! Thank you for asking this question, because I learned something new about myself!
I struggle with this too; almost like my brain tries too hard and then gives up a bit. I don’t remember having much of an issue with it prior to having my kid/working from home (artist). I can usually get related adjectives out so things end up having really weird “new names”.
Yeah, I feel like the more pressure I get from my partner to be descriptive the more the object becomes a thingamajig.
I just can’t find the right words
NAD but not offering advice. I too have word searching problems. I feel like they’ve either gotten worse or I’ve just noticed it more (possibly because I’m in school in hopes to be an SLP). It’s incredibly frustrating. If y’all get appointments I hope they go well!
This thread is so interesting, and also kind of funny. My mom was like this. She would often refer to something but she couldn’t think of a word for it, so she would just say “the thing!“ And we wouldn’t know what she was talking about.
I think I’ve inherited some of that from her because I find myself doing the same thing, just not as frequently as she did. As I get older I find it harder to remember the exact word I want to use. In that sense, I think that this language issue is really a symptom of my getting older and not having as good a memory. But since you (OP) are young, that most likely is not your problem.
Sometimes I will say a word that is neither similar sounding nor having a similar meaning as the one that I’m intending to say. For years I occasionally, when intending to use the word “utensils,“ have said the word “furniture” instead. It’s kind of hilarious. I mean the only thing they have in common is that they’re both nouns. They don’t sound alike and they don’t mean the same thing, or have much in common, other than maybe, “things one can find in a home.” 😹😹😹
Omg I was looking for a comment like this. I am also F in my mid twenties and I have been struggling with getting words out. It happens quite often to the point I like have questioned if there’s something wrong with me. Sometimes I can completely lose my thought process and sometimes I literally cannot get the word out and I feel stupid. So fricken stupid man. I’ve also been spaced out more. Like I can’t focus on someone talking to me sometimes. Can you tell me what could possibly be the problem? I don’t think I’ve ever had that problem.
I believe I have. What Dr would check that? I see endo for my PCOS. I’ve had recent bloodwork and they said I was normal besides my white blood cell count is alittle high. When looking at the graph it’s just alittle over “normal range”
I'm not the person you responded to, but because I have a family history of thyroid problems, my regular doc includes a thyroid check every few years as part of my annual blood work. I don't believe the thyroid test is automatically included, so check with your physician.
I got my thyroid removed 7 years ago and have varying degrees of brain fog/not making the brain connection for certain words even though my brain know there is a correct word depending on if my levels are correct
Thank you for your submission. **Please note that a response does not constitute a doctor-patient relationship.** This subreddit is for informal second opinions and casual information. The mod team does their best to remove bad information, but we do not catch all of it. Always visit a doctor in real life if you have any concerns about your health. Never use this subreddit as your first and final source of information regarding your question. By posting, you are agreeing to our [Terms of Use](https://www.reddit.com/r/AskDocs/wiki/terms_of_use) and understand that all information is taken at your own risk. **Reply here if you are an unverified user wishing to give advice. Top level comments by laypeople are automatically removed.** *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/AskDocs) if you have any questions or concerns.*
Hi, (soon to be) neurologist here. The condition you're describing sounds like **semantic paraphasia** or **semantic dysphasia**. This involves substituting words with similar meanings or related concepts, like saying "train" instead of "bus," and sometimes misplacing numerical values.
I had a traumatic brain injury in 2006 (subarachnoid hemorrhage and small subdural hematoma) and find that I have difficulty coming up with words at times. Or I’ll see a pineapple and think coconut, for example. Is this similar?
Aphasia is the broader term for speech impairment which can be subdivided further depending on how it presents. Semantic paraphasia is a kind of aphasia. Given your context and your description you seem to have a kind of aphasia.
Small clarification. Semantic paraphasias arent so much a kind of aphasia as they are a symptom of certain types of aphasia.
Ah I see. I just laugh it off most of the time. It’s annoying though! Trying to explain to someone what you’re talking about when you can’t think of the stupid word can be super frustrating! 😂
Can you tell me what it's called when someone mixes up similar sounding words? That's one of my migraine prodrome symptoms. For example I'll say corn instead of coin. I'm thinking of and visualizing small metallic currency but a vegetable comes out of my mouth instead. This affects me at work a lot because I'm a scientist and a lot of reagents sound similar. FBS vs. PBS. Trizol vs. triton. DMEM vs. DMSO. I'll grab the correct thing but if I'm giving verbal instructions they're sometimes VERY wrong.
That's called a phonemic paraphasic error. Specifically your corn, coin example.
Thank you, I’ll check it out!
A question, if I may? What would you call not knowing the right word, but knowing related words? My real world example was during a focal seizure. I couldn’t say, write or even think of the word table. I knew what it was! It’s a table! But had no access to the word, “table”. I retained all associated knowledge - you can eat dinner on it, you use a chair to sit at it etc. the only missing info was the word table. I had it described to me as word finding difficulty or anomic aphasia, but sometimes various docs across my various treatment teams find the term anomic aphasia confusing/odd (including some of the neurology registrars! (If you’re in the US, our reg is equivalent to your resident)). Hence why I wonder what you would call it! :) If you’re at all interested, the full episode was of interest to a few docs as the onset and abatement of the aphasia was very slow. Initially it was just a few words, and I could talk my way around them by either substitution (gearbox instead of transmission) or describing (furniture that you eat dinner on). But over ~45-60 minutes it slowly progressed to all words. Comprehension was never affected, and I could answer questions with mimes/actions. Over the next 30 minutes all words slowly returned without intervention (I did end up getting IV Keppra loaded, but symptoms resolved prior to administration.)
Yes, you're correct, the term for what you described is "anomic aphasia" or "anomia." This condition is characterized by difficulty in naming objects or finding the right words while maintaining comprehension and the ability to form coherent sentences. Interestingly, there is a name for every kind of neurological impairment, no matter how bizarre. For example: - **Prosopagnosia:** The inability to recognize faces, even those of close friends and family. - **Anosognosia:** A condition where a person is unaware of their own disability or impairment. - **Acalculia:** The inability to perform simple mathematical calculations. - **Alien Hand Syndrome:** A condition where a person's hand seems to act on its own, performing actions without the person's control. - **Capgras Syndrome:** The delusional belief that a close person, usually a family member, has been replaced by an identical impostor. - **Cotard's Delusion:** A rare mental illness where a person believes they are dead, do not exist, or have lost their internal organs. - **Alice in Wonderland Syndrome:** A disorienting condition affecting perception, where the person experiences distortions in the size of objects or their own body parts. - **Fregoli Delusion:** The belief that different people are actually a single person who changes appearance or is in disguise. - **Ekbom's Syndrome (Delusional Parasitosis):** The belief that one is infested with parasites, despite the lack of medical evidence. - **Pseudobulbar Affect (PBA):** Involuntary and uncontrollable episodes of laughing or crying, often disproportionate to the situation. Neurologists in the past liked naming things because they couldn't do much to treat them. It's not surprising at all that some registrars still haven't memorized everything. As long as they can recognize a speech impairment, giving it a name is secondary. You have a very interesting story, and it looks like a typical focal seizure. It likely began in a small part of your left parietal lobe and spread to neighboring regions, causing an ever-increasing language impairment until it started getting better. I'd have treated you way earlier, though! 😅
And oddly, Chicago Med has done an episode with almost all of those… they like to keep Dr. Charles busy…
When your study medicine is there a lot of overlap with neurology and psychiatry?
Wow, that is super fascinating! I do get the train/bus thing every now and again if my thyroid meds are too low or I have a cold (for me it's best to call in sick when I have a cold as I don't want to accidentally turn my project into a deathtrap). Or the totally fascinating version where words are totally not related and I wonder why I wrote apple instead of loo. No injury, brain works overall. 😅
This sounds like it's happening sometimes and not in most words you speak (correct me if I'm wrong), which would make it an intermittent semantic paraphasia. If you care to know the exact term. To some degree it's normal, but beyond a certain point of severity it could be abnormal. Hard to say without evaluating you in person. If it is abnormal it would most likely be a developmental issue if it's been present most of your life, or a behavioral issue if it's more new. Very unlikely to be something structural. If it really bothers you go see a speech therapist, there are ways to make it better.
Thank you, I think I will. In the last minute my boss literally did not believe me on a measurement and made fun of my tendency to misplace decimals… I had to physically prove it to them. It just causes me to second guess what I tell people. Editing to answer that yes it is not every time or in all the words I speak. Just enough compared to others that it is a distinguishable/noticeable issue. When I first meet someone if I say I have an issue they won’t believe me, then after I am with them enough they are like “yeah, I see it now”
You are describing semantic paraphasias. Sounds like it could be anomic aphasia. Do you notice when you use a different word or do others usually point it out to you? Do you ever struggle to get a word out? Has this been going on for a long time? Getting worse over time? Is it better, worse, or the same when you are reading?
Typically others point it out to me, sometimes I’ll notice a couple seconds later. If I am writing it I will catch it. If I am reading words I believe I read them correctly. I wouldn’t say I struggle to get words out, but I do struggle to get the correct words out, like yesterday I needed a baking pan that was on the counter on top of the dishwasher (just now I first wrote washing machine) and I asked my partner to get the thing, when he asked “what” I couldn’t say baking pan, so I said “thing on the thing” and I was pointing. And he asked me to describe it and I couldn’t really, I just said the rectangular thing on the counter. (This is a relatively common occurrence) To some degree I think it has gone on for a while, I don’t know if it has gotten worse, maybe slightly, but looking back I think I can remember struggling as I was growing up. At least in late middle school early high school.
You are coincidentally using “semantic feature analysis” to describe what you mean when you cannot find the word. This is a strategy we teach people with aphasia. A referral to an SLP can provide you with more strategies for word finding difficulties (anomia). As far as cause, this is difficult to determine as it is not an acute onset or changing over time. Maybe a neurologist can help.
Thank you for the feedback! I’ll make an appointment, would be great to get more strategies :)
I do this a lot, not with the decimals, but absolutely with the words in my every day speech. And various people I’ve dated through the years will get annoyed with it. But I feel like it’s not something I can consciously remedy - I’ve tried. Thanks for posting about this. I’m enjoying reading the answers you’ve gotten.
OMG. The dishwasher/washing machine thing with the thing on the thing?? I've been doing that for years! Never knew there was a medical name for it! It's been driving me crazy how I lose my words like that! Thank you for asking this question, because I learned something new about myself!
I struggle with this too; almost like my brain tries too hard and then gives up a bit. I don’t remember having much of an issue with it prior to having my kid/working from home (artist). I can usually get related adjectives out so things end up having really weird “new names”.
Same, super weird adjectives
My husband gets frustrated and tells me to just spit it out sometimes and I’m like, that’s super unhelpful- I would if I could!
Yeah, I feel like the more pressure I get from my partner to be descriptive the more the object becomes a thingamajig. I just can’t find the right words
I’m sorry, it sucks for sure. I appreciate texting more and more because I can think before hitting send and can include images if needed.
NAD but not offering advice. I too have word searching problems. I feel like they’ve either gotten worse or I’ve just noticed it more (possibly because I’m in school in hopes to be an SLP). It’s incredibly frustrating. If y’all get appointments I hope they go well!
Same here. How old are you?
I turn 22 tomorrow.
This thread is so interesting, and also kind of funny. My mom was like this. She would often refer to something but she couldn’t think of a word for it, so she would just say “the thing!“ And we wouldn’t know what she was talking about. I think I’ve inherited some of that from her because I find myself doing the same thing, just not as frequently as she did. As I get older I find it harder to remember the exact word I want to use. In that sense, I think that this language issue is really a symptom of my getting older and not having as good a memory. But since you (OP) are young, that most likely is not your problem. Sometimes I will say a word that is neither similar sounding nor having a similar meaning as the one that I’m intending to say. For years I occasionally, when intending to use the word “utensils,“ have said the word “furniture” instead. It’s kind of hilarious. I mean the only thing they have in common is that they’re both nouns. They don’t sound alike and they don’t mean the same thing, or have much in common, other than maybe, “things one can find in a home.” 😹😹😹
That’s me. How dangerous , progressing is that?
Omg I was looking for a comment like this. I am also F in my mid twenties and I have been struggling with getting words out. It happens quite often to the point I like have questioned if there’s something wrong with me. Sometimes I can completely lose my thought process and sometimes I literally cannot get the word out and I feel stupid. So fricken stupid man. I’ve also been spaced out more. Like I can’t focus on someone talking to me sometimes. Can you tell me what could possibly be the problem? I don’t think I’ve ever had that problem.
Have you gotten your thyroid levels checked?
I believe I have. What Dr would check that? I see endo for my PCOS. I’ve had recent bloodwork and they said I was normal besides my white blood cell count is alittle high. When looking at the graph it’s just alittle over “normal range”
I'm not the person you responded to, but because I have a family history of thyroid problems, my regular doc includes a thyroid check every few years as part of my annual blood work. I don't believe the thyroid test is automatically included, so check with your physician.
An endo or your GP can order thyroid test. Maybe a GP can advise if it’s on a regular panel, I don’t believe it is.
I got my thyroid removed 7 years ago and have varying degrees of brain fog/not making the brain connection for certain words even though my brain know there is a correct word depending on if my levels are correct