deja vu
4 synonyms and 0 antonyms for deja vu, grouped by meaning and by how common each one is.
Noun — The strange feeling that you have already lived through the present moment before, even though you know you have not.
Synonyms
Less common
Still standard English, but they carry more weight.
Rare, literary or technical
Precise, but they will stand out — check the sense before using one.
Synonyms by Meaning
1. noun
The strange feeling that you have already lived through the present moment before, even though you know you have not.
“Walking into the empty station, I had a powerful sense of deja vu.”
2. noun informal
The tiresome sense that something happening now is a repeat of something that happened before.
“Another leadership crisis in October — it was deja vu all over again.”
How to use deja vu
The word patterns that sound natural to a native speaker.
Neutral; the 'tiresome repeat' sense is informal and often journalistic.
Etymology
From French déjà vu, literally 'already seen'.
Full origin of deja vu →Frequently asked questions
What causes deja vu?
There is no single settled explanation. The leading accounts involve a brief mismatch in how the brain handles memory and recognition, so a new scene is tagged as familiar. It is common in healthy people, especially younger adults, and is only a medical concern when it is frequent and comes with other symptoms of seizure.
What is the difference between deja vu and jamais vu?
Deja vu is finding something new oddly familiar. Jamais vu is the reverse — a familiar word, face or place suddenly feeling completely strange, as when a common word stops looking like a real word.
Should it be written with accents?
In careful writing the French accents are usual: déjà vu. Plain deja vu is widely accepted in everyday English and is what most people type.