Meaning & use

Typoglycemia

noun·Academic

Last updated

The claimed phenomenon whereby a reader can still understand words in a sentence even when the interior letters of each word are scrambled, as long as the first and last letters stay in place.

See it in a sentence

The viral typoglycemia email proved surprisingly readable even though every word had its middle letters jumbled.

Researchers caution that typoglycemia is more of an internet legend than a rigorously proven cognitive effect.

A note on using this word

The term is a modern coinage blending 'typo' with 'glycemia' (blood sugar), and has no real medical meaning despite the scientific-sounding suffix.

Words with a similar meaning

word-scrambling effect

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