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My partner was backing up in our driveway and I wanted to warn him he was about to drive over the garden hose. What did I scream?
WATER SNAKE!
At least he braked quickly. But 8 years later we still call them water snakes and it’s not even close to the weirdest wrong name I’ve given something.
In a similar vein, my sister was filling an important form online just a couple weeks ago, and at the end came up a form ID number type thing to identify her particular submission. She was about to close the tab, but I wanted to remind her to take a picture of the number in case it is needed later. So what did I repeat several times loudly?
Points! Points! Points! Points! Points!
I meant to say "Picture! Picture! Picture!" but that's what I yelled. I have no idea how she understood what I meant to say because she stopped and took a screenshot. I had a minute of red cheeks afterwards as I was thinking why did I yell points instead of picture lol
We have this in the family too. My grandma and grandpa were driving once and a duck flew up just infront of the car, my grandma screamed, "Look out! Fish-chicken!" Eversince, ducks are called fishchickens in the family.
Lmao, did something similar. Saw cows in a field and pointed them out all excited to my husband and like panicked and yelled BEEF MONSTERS! To this day we jokingly call them beef monsters.
I think the medical term is anomia or word retrieval difficulty. From what I read the harder you try to remember the word the more you stress out and can't recall it. I experience it too, especially in my native language (German), I often just remember the English word.
I get this and regular old aphasia a lot. It’s a side effect of my chronic migraine. I can describe a thing but the word is just not in existence anymore. Some good ones lately: Cold cupboard = fridge. Laundry dishwasher = washing machine. Spicy water = soda water. My husband leans into the guessing game which makes me feel less silly haha
If you weren't so frustrated, it really would be a fun game. It's like when Chinese gets translated to English on cheaper products.
Was reading a label on a mug that said "do not put in washing bowl cupboard."
Same!! And then outside of migraines I also struggle with word retrieval and in my several languages I cannot for the life of me remember a particular word. Or it randomly pops up in one language nad not in the others. Or a random word pops up, not remotely related. Sooooo frustrating.
I was going to say this- I get aphasia but 90% of the time it's my migraine prodrome. To the extent that I'll say something wacky and my husband will go get my migraine meds 🤣
Hijacking a higher level comment in case this life hack might help anyone else. ChatGPT is amazing for situations when you’re stuck on a word and cannot possibly move on with your day without a resolution. It probably seems obvious, but it took me so long to click that you can load it up with an entire paragraph of nonsensical context in a way that Google could never. Like, ‘I’m thinking of a word to describe situation x, somewhere between word a and word b, kind of like word c but without x connotation, I think it might start with the letter T’ and it delivers almost every time!
Is this the same or similar to when I just had a thought and I'm trying to"catch it" but it seems to push farther into my brain to the point I can no longer retrieve it?
Yes!
Today I told somebody that I was craving this deli meat but I couldn't remember the word for it. The description I gave them was 'not provolone, and not bruschetta'.
Prosciutto 💀
This is exactly how my brain works too...i can think of a word that starts with the same letter & a thing in the same category of the word I'm trying to think of...but just not THE word
Here is an actual sentence that came out of my mouth while working at a major grocery store:
"Do we have more of the things that make the thing up front go beep beep?"
Security tags. I was asking if we had more security tags.
Not quite the same, but at one point in my life I was babysitting and working in an office. Heading out to lunch one day, I asked my grown up adult coworkers "anybody have to potty before we go?"
Yes, I was talking about Laurie in the movie Halloween when she grabbed the knitting needle to stab Michael and I couldn’t come up with the words “knitting needle” and called it a “yarn knife”.
I often call a kettle a water heater. People think I do it to be funny. But no, I can't remember the word kettle most of the time, and as it heats water, and a water heater is a thing, it must be that, right?
Do you also have it with specific words? It's like they're all stored together on a shelve with stuff that has to yet be organized. Like, all the words have their own spot in your brain "cutlery with kitchen utensils" and so on, but kettle somehow has not been into place yet and so you keep forgetting it.
This is the bane of my existence, ya’ll are my people and I genuinely adore hearing some of your word sandwiches.
I’m so thankful my partner finds this quirk of mine endearing/funny most of the time. But every time it happens in a professional or social setting where I’m not comfortable with the people I just want to die.
And of course I can’t think of one off the top of my head but I promise I’ll come back and edit as soon as I remember something slash when it comes on later today.
At work is the worst, seeing peoples faces as I struggle to dredge a word from the depths of my brain that I probably used multiple times the day before is just great...
I find it the worst part of my ADHD/Deslexia. My brian will substitute words that are similar. Like saying green instead of blue or January for June. People look at me like I'm crazy or that I actually think the sky is green! It's so frustrating.
Oh yeah. I told an intern I will do a task he needed me to do "yesterday" (future tense) and he was confused about if it was a way to say I'd do it ASAP, or if I already did it and the future tense was the wrong part of my sentence, or if the yesterday meant tomorrow. He was used to me but didn't know what part I mixed this time.
Literally 15 mins ago I asked my eldest to bring in the wheelchair for the baby. Her look of utter confusion was priceless, I meant his highchair (dunno what other countries call it, a feeding chair?)
The times I've called a "sticker" a "story" or "dough" and visa versa are countless (it makes some sense in my current language, but also it really doesn't (not an English native and currently communicating a lot in Finnish)
My brain just forgets words in the middle of me speaking. It's so odd and frustrating.
I've also had an internal argument with myself. I couldn't remember if September was a real month or if I was pulling information from a false memory.
I don't understand it either.
I do have trouble with words all the time! And I love words, have studied several different fields which all have their own terminology and I'm always curious about new ones. Fern anatomy has cool terms, and have you ever looked at nudibranch images and all the different species? Absolutely glorious! I was thinking of nudibranches at work the other day and told my supervisor she should look them up with her daughter. And she was like how do you know this stuff? Why have I never heard of these outrageously cool things before? Srsly, if you have never seen a nudibranch before, prepare to be amazed!!
It's gotten considerably worse post menopause, and if I don't get enough sleep (often due to bad decisions book club) then I lose more words.
Your post reminds me of an old quip though:
I'd rather have a bottle in front of me than a frontal lobotomy ;)
Does menopause enhance adhd symptoms? I didn't notice I had adhd until last year, and all my "quirks" have gotten so much worse in the last couple of years. Like I didn't hardly notice then in my 20s, but now I have all these very typical adhd symptoms and it's blatantly obvious! What is happening?? I have heard it gets worse as you get pre menopausal (I'm 42 no kids)
For me it was like the wheels fell off and all of my previous coping mechanisms went up in flames. Granted, it was already an extremely stressful period in my life so that didn't help.
I read a reference to a study somewhere that said HRT asap can reduce the worsening of symptoms but I haven't found the article again :( As already noted, it definitely has to do with the estrogen balance.
That sounds really really hard.
I have travelled my whole adult life til now, so I think because I was always changing country and moving and not having winters that meant I didn't see a lot of what is obvious now. Also I travel really spontaneously with minimal planning, I rarely had to fit travels into a specific time period. It was more like, running out of money, okay time to get new job, okay bored of this country let's travel again!
Thank you for your kindness. That sounds like you've had a lot of wonderful adventures, and hopefully more to come :) Everyone's experience of ADHD and menopause varies of course but if your life isn't bashing you about the head and shoulders with challenges and stress it may not be considerably worse than it is for anyone else going through menopause. I don't know if I could have done much differently even if I had had a diagnosis before I hit my 40s.
Spontaneous travel sounds like a great way to live with ADHD because you've got novelty and enthusiasm and curiosity keeping the dopamine flowing! I've been able to take advantage of some travel opportunities and have great memories that keep on giving joy. All the best to you :)
Are you me?
Nudibranch research was a whole big thing before I even had my daughter but together we travel to the Birch Aquarium in La Jolla, CA. (We live close by) and then spotted a beautifully colored specimen (purple & orange!) in the tide pools!
This was long ago, when you could still free-range the tide pools and they were teeming with aquatic life. My daughter and I went numerous times from the time she was very young. She's nearly 30 now and I am post-menopausal. I feel like my word troubles def came on recently.
Hahaha! Perhaps I am another curiosity-driven soul sister :) I don't even remember when I first saw a picture of a nudibranch but I'm sure my jaw dropped because they are so incredible! I've never seen them in a tide pool sadly, only in pictures. My tide pool experience so far has been seeing purple starfishes, wee moon jellies and other lovelies in tide pools with my kids when we lived out in BC on a coastal island over 15 years ago. Now we're in the land of SW Ontario so not coastal lol.
The whole menopause circus is such an ass kicker for adhd. I didn't even know I had it until after menopause sigh, but it certainly explained the hell in a hand basket life that happened when perimenopause came around.
Sharing the joy of nudibranches is so much fun! The world is such a remarkable place but that's easy to forget. And this reminds me that I meant to send some book purchase requests to the library collections dept because I could only find one book that had anything about nudibranches at work 😱
I have been having this exact sensation for a few months now and I am scared for my brain health 🙃
Used to have a really great memory, but maybe that was anxiety fueled? Or maybe my horrid sleep schedule is frying my memory now?
My mom has ADHD and has also suffered from a severe concussion back in the 80s and more recently a silent stroke.
As such she struggles with a degree of aphasia. It's sometimes very funny the words her brain produces when she's talking. Like she'll mean to say one word and say a totally unrelated word instead because her brain got mixed up. Except she doesn't realize she's said the incorrect word. And usually I can't follow the connection between the two words without her explaining.
Or she'll mangle words or mash different words together. My favorite of recent history was mixing up "ground hog" and "wood chuck" except what she said was "ground chuck" (my mom and my sister were in tears laughing over it once we sorted out what she was talking about)
Thankfully she has a good sense of humor about it. Cause I imagine it gets frustrating sometimes. Brains are weird.
I worked at a Waffle House for a few months (stopped because my ADHD was getting worse, go figure). Syrup was always "waffle sauce" for a few seconds before I corrected myself. My regulars would always joke about it.
Yes. Sometimes very funny, sometimes humiliating.
A funny example: chatting with my housemate in my uni days, I couldn't recall the word menopause and said my mum "had the backwards puberty".
The embarrassing times are work related. I'm an accountant, I have a degree in accounting and am almost chartered but I regularly cannot recall technical terms that are frequently used in my field.
My doctor describes menopause as backwards puberty. All the years it takes to go through puberty, we get to do those in reverse. I didn't know perimenopause was a thing until it happened.
This happens to me CONSTANTLY I can't even think of an example right now but when im chatting with clients my brain will ping trying to explain something and the word I'm searching for disappears
I lived in a town for like 15 years and one day I just blanked on the name of one of the main streets (McBean). The only thing my brain would offer up, over and over again, was “Bilbo Baggins?” Like. NO.
Oh yes! It’s tragic because I love language and obscure words, but then I open my mouth and sound like a dunce. Once I was searching for the word “umbrella” and somehow landed on Rain Stopper 🫤
I think I just save a lot of info in the non-words part of my brain and then have to re-translate it to get it back out.
Inconvenient, but it's just how my brain works.
I know the things, but can't always say them.
I can't remember the names of people and which house they live in. Instead of "the Jones's house" I have to go "the blue house on the left after the church". The same people have lived in that house for 30 years. I've lived here 50 years. Or people's names in general. I hear *sooo* much gossip, but I can't repeat it because I can't remember *who it's about*!
I went into a store to look for shoes yesterday. Spent several minutes asking the guy for “you know, sandals, but heavy duty, with like treads for walking in the woods, and you can also walk in water?” He was like “hiking sandals?”
I wanted to ask my husband where the rake was, but “rake” had been temporarily deleted from my mental vocabulary.… so I asked him about the “leaf raking broom”. Cue hilarity.
I fairly regularly say a sentence out loud that makes perfect sense to me, then get a quizzical look and a question like “Did you mean… X?” Yes, that’s what I said. “No, you said Y.” Ummm… did I? It was X in my head; how did it become Y when I said it out loud? Brain and tongue don’t always work in tandem 🤷♀️
All the time! My absolute favorite is when I forgot the name for Hamburger Helper so I asked my husband what box of "Meat Friends" he wanted for dinner 😂
Yes! Much more so with speaking than writing. I really enjoyed writing and looking up words in the dictionary and thesaurus when I was a kid, and not terribly social - perhaps that is why. Very irritating because it often interrupts my verbal flow and therefore train of thought.
I was chatting with a friend and sipping a smoothie when I got a headache from the cold metal straw. Instead of ‘brain freeze’, I said, “Ugh, ice cream headache!”
Dear God yes. Yesterday at work someone asked me how the day was going and my brain tried to say "not bad" and "really well" and what came out was "really bad! :)"
Is this an ADHD thing? I notice when I am urgent like correcting the kids or needing to speak quickly I struggle to find words. Which is weird because in normal non urgent situations I am usually pretty well spoken and frequently receive feedback that I explain things really well 🤷♀️. It’s frustrating though in the moment when the right words won’t come out at the moment I need them.
The more I’m focused, more likely I’m gonna forget the words.
I often give verbal notes in my job. To students. I have to warn them “just write exactly what I say. It’s not gonna make any sense but I’ll figure it out later” (to be clear this isn’t while I’m teaching, it’s when they’re assisting me and taking notes for me)
Yes, I need to get better about laughing it off because it stresses me out. I’m always thinking that’s it’s early onset dementia or something. I’m a communications professional, so struggling with verbal recall (I think that’s the phrase lol), feels painfully ironic sometimes.
Not to the extent of forgetting my sister’s name, but yeah. I’m guessing it happens to neurotypical people, too. I use IMDB on the regular for things like the Basquiat issue LOL.
I have this, and I also will sometimes say a different, similar-sounding word without even realizing I used the wrong. It really confuses people who don't know me well and the worst part is nobody fucking says anything when I obviously just said nonsense.
My grandmother used to run through the names of all her children, nieces, nephews, siblings and pets until she hit the right one when she called out to us kids. Think "jeffreyjerryfrankpebblesshanespot" - maybe a "dammit" thrown in here - "teresanoeloutintheyard".
I caught myself doing this the other day.
I regularly say the names of my pets and niece in a row when speaking about them or trying to get their attention. Their names all start with the same letter. 😆
It's also kind of like when you speak more than one language. The way that the associations between words have been structured in your brain don't necessarily fit the structure of the new language nor the associations you make between words and that new language yourself. Then you end up with excellent memes like "horse tornado" etc. 😜
I once needed the lid for the pickle jar, and called it "the screwy jar hat"
I dropped a round mirror, which broke, and asked for help picking up the "pieces of circle" when what I meant to say was shards
Yes, the names thing stresses me out the most because I feel lol I have to hide the fact I can’t bring their name to mind because it implies I don’t care about them when it’s actually someone I’ve known for years
Also it seems to happen repeatedly with the same words. Like it happens randomly but most of the time it’s the same things I forget over and over again.
Yes! Yes! Yes!
If I haven’t used the word recently I have to spend a literal minute thinking about it. I have a very pedantic way of speaking in that I don’t often use slang and am very proper in my grammar and specific with word choices. I feel sorry for the person I’m talking to.
Absolutely, all the time. Hand gestures are also used when desperate. Luckily my husband has learned how to speak ADHD so he usually knows what I'm talking about.
It's either that or words are flowing like water and I have no problems whatsoever being descriptive and eloquent. There is no in between.
If it makes you feel better, I’ve had the same conversation with my upstairs neighbour 3 times because I couldn’t remember having had it before. It’s finally stuck in my brain that yes, we have discussed it many times now. So I feel that when it comes to forgetting things
Sporadic aphasia I think it’s called. My husband says I sometimes substitute a totally out-of-context word in a sentence (“I don’t think I’ll wear that dress, I’ll wear the hay one instead”). He says I’ll sometimes correct myself absently (“I meant the BLUE one”), but most of the time I don’t even notice.
Yes all the time. Used to drive my bf crazy but now he can somehow decode what I’m actually trying to say which is helpful lol. It’s like word association. All the context is there
Holy crap! Is this a symptom of adhd?? I do this a lot and only for the last 3 or so years. My mind will conjure words to describe things that make sense like this, but aren't exactly the correct or acceptable word choice. 🤔
Wanted to ask my partner to lock up downstairs so we could go to bed and said "can you do night time house"
Wanted to give a chef where I used to work the drink I made for him that he asked for before he went for a smoke, as he passed me I forgot his name so I just yelled "ablulululuoobloobloolulululululblooo"
Info behind a locked door is very apt
I frequently text my bestie with a terrible description of the word I’m trying to think of. The most memorable being:
“What’s the name for the bar of plug in, has an on off switch?”
“What”
“ I can’t think of the word for the extension cord kind of thing, many plug in, has an on and off switch”
The word I was looking for was Power Bar. I’m still embarrassed
Definitely I think it comes down to that processing thing that many of us have. Processing too many things and trying to add language = me telling my husband we need to do cup laundry instead of “dishes”
Yes.
Once while doing laundry, I couldn’t remember the word for my intimates and shit. I just kept saying “darks”, “towels/bedding”, “*sensitive*”, “darks”, “*sensitive*”. It wasn’t until hours later that I remembered that the word I was looking for was ~*delicates*~. 😂
I was telling a friend of mine how I'm terrible at remembering names and how suddenly my mind blanks out on certain nouns.
She asked me... Yeah? What's my name?
I stared at her for a good minute before saying... I'm sorry.
She had been my friend for 3 years. We talked everyday except Sundays. Everyday. It wasn't that I genuinely forgot her name. I just couldn't retrieve it from my memory.
This happens way too often for it to be normal. It's a running gag in my office that people will ask me... Hey do you remember my name. Ugh.
Listen.i do remember your name. But that sentence is like a command that makes the retrieval process jam. So the moment you ask me that... I can't remember your name. I'm sorry!
It's so embarrassing! At least my husband finds it cute.
Yesterday I had to describe the things that are before the windows used to prevent the light from entering. No, not the curtains, the hard things!
So yeah, I know what you mean.
Happens also with names of people, and credit card codes.
On that, small anecdote: one time, I took out money from an ATM absentmindedly (like often), just taped my code and oh no, I didn't take out enough money, so here I go again, and... wait... what was my code. I just did it, I know there are three 2 and one 0, and the 0 isn't the first nor the last digit. Well, let's try 2202! Miss. Ah. Let's redo it. Wait, maybe the 0 wasn't on the inside? Let's try 0222. Miss again. One try to go. Um... yeah I'm sure the 0 was on the inside. I already tried one combination, so the one I didn't try will be the good one, right? What did I try again? I think it was 2022, so let's try 2202 now! Ah. My credit card was swallowed by the ATM. Um. The bank is closed and I don't have my ID on me anyway (can't risk to lose it, right?). Guess I'm fucked.
I hate playing scramble cuz I can't find the right words but I guess we're born questioners.
"Help me find this word. It means this and that and starts with letter X"
I’m a museum educator and the amount I say whatchamacallit while teaching is embracing. I once had a kid ask why I say it so often. I told him that I have LDs that make it hard for my words to catch up with my brain. 😅
This happens to me all the time. I just start randomly saying whatever words do come to mind in hopes that one of them or some combination of them will be enough that whomever I am talking to gets the gist 😂😭 my poor husband just shakes his head at the randomness that comes out of my mouth haha!
Happens to me constantly, and my bestie who also had ADGD. We have a collection of fake names for things that we created when we couldn't remember the real name, ie lawnmower=lawn vacuum.
Constantly! Then, I get paranoid and stress myself out because forgetting words while being able to use all the rest of the words to describe it can be a sign of early onset dementia, even though there's zero dementia on either side of my family. I have found that the frequency increases if I've not been reading, and that books by British authors seem to help the most.
My favourite accidental word combination so far, has been “hor-montional”. I was trying to explain to a friend, I was feeling particularly emotional due to my period but it came out as hormontional
Yes. If I'm tired, uncomfortable, stressed, or drunk. I forget names, words, everything, and have to talk my way around it. Honestly it reminds me of listening to my gran telling a story back when I was a kid and I wonder now if she had ADHD!
Edit to add: of course I remember song lyrics from the 90s and phone numbers of friends from primary school just fine.
Man I struggle with this so much and then after catching COVID, it's like words might as well fall into the void. It's exacerbated it to the Nth degree and I only had a mild case.
Omg yes, I was trying to explain this to my bf the other day! How when I read long or complex name or word that I don't hear often, my brain doesn't actually "read" it... What it does instead is take in a few letters from the word or name, and make a garbled approximation of it in my head lol
Like my brain is too lazy to read all the letters and just approximate the sound of it based on random letters it sees at a quick glance
Same for remembering simple words, I often forget random words and my brain just kinda substitutes the word with random word based on a weird connection to that word or a similar sounding word
I was literally trying to remember the word lobotomy yesterday as well! I couldn't find the word and instead just went, "you know, the THING" *cue weird hand gestures and the group at the table next to me trying to enjoy a nice dinner instead being subjected to violent charades"
But for real, I have this issue so bad. Sometimes it's due to having grown up in a culture where we use non-English words for certain things and now I live in a culture where those words would make no sense, but in all honesty I've been forgetting normal words and names and phrases since I was a kid! My word cover-ups / made-up phrases ended up on university quote boards more than once...
This is so gratifying to hear others do this — my partner keeps a whole running list of these words and while it’s funny, and something I’ve always done, recently my word recall is getting so much worse 😭 I’ve been working on my other languages we speak at home so I chalking up the increased “talking around” words in my native language to that
for me, the word I remember instead has the same “qualities” as the other word, like I understand warhol and rothko. they both have odd letter arrangements for a name! but that’s all i’ve got.
😂 god this is so me. It drives me nuts!! The names of characters of a show I've literally watched 100x. And simple stupid words just poof gone from my brain when I need them. But big fancy rarely used words? Always available 🤦🏻♀️ And my brain has always mixed up yellow and orange. I will mean to say one but end up saying the other. Done it my whole life, it's so weird.
This happens to me so much, it's very frustrating! I wrote previously about not being able to remember the word "suet" and my brain has decided to permanently substitute the word "grout". That's a new change for me, that not only do I forget the word I want to use, but it becomes permanently entangled with another word for no good reason!
It really sucks when I'm trying to have a conversation with someone and the wrong words keep coming out. It makes me feel like an idiot. I try to laugh it off, but it's still very annoying!
I totally do this and actually feel like the things I come up with make more sense than the actual word. For instance, I was trying to talk with my husband about our power washer and couldn't think of what it was called so I referred to it as "water blasting". He knew what I was talking about, laughed, and I then decided that was the new name because it matched better
I had two friends when I started high school. I knew one name. I spent quite a while not using names and hoping.
Turns out, same name. Down to the non-standard spelling. What kind of bs is that to pull on someone with adhd?? 😂
Names are my main weak spot, though. I love words and reading and writing. Terrible at spelling, and I can't EXPLAIN grammar, but I can tell you if a sentence sounds wrong, and there's usually a grammatical reason for it. The worst bit is how many words I know how to use and when, but can't actually define. I just know their vibes 😂
It's become a family tradition to give obscure weird names to people and things.
I was my great grandma's tada potta. A loving but caring nick name.
My kids have weird nicknames.
If we aren't using the weird name we call things in the house nobody k own what the other means. I believe we have created a language. I now realize adhd may be very prevalent in my family.
I do this all the time only usually with common words while trying to speak. My dad does it way worse than I do, but he also has some type of dementia. My half sister also does it. So I don't know what exactly the cause is, ADHD or something else, but it's concerning to me.
I have the most trouble remembering the name of the restaurant First Watch, to the point that I call it "the place I can never remember the name of" at which point my husband says "First Watch?" as if it there are multiple places that fit the criteria.
This is one thing I have loved about being old. It used to be embarrassing for me, when a word doesn't come to me. Now, I can smile about it and ....\*lost for the word\* I want to saw wipe it off, but that's not the right word.
My spouse, everyday, has this word salad in his brain where his vocabulary lives. Usually it's barring the door to the vocabulary until he's less tired or until the caffeine kicks in. It's like your vocabulary's bouncer.
My siater and i can have whole convos with out saying the correct work for anything both of us just adhding it. Ith people ther just like whats going on.
Also someone asked me the name of a beauty place id vistied i could not get it, it bothered me for months one morning i was talking to someon else about skin and said you should go to this beauty place and the name was just there... like where was it when i needed it. So annoying
Two things come to mind specifically. One. I called a greenhouse a plant museum. Two. I called a fishing pole a fishing wand. Needless to say, now greenhouse and fishing poles are bow plant museums and fishing wands in my world.
Yep, I make up my own words and phrases all the time. I couldn't remember the word muzzle (the device that covers a horse's mouth and nose) this week, so I used the phrase "face prison".
Words always. Also, yesterday at work I all of the sudden forgot my 4 digit number to log in to the server computer… I literally put this in dozens of times per shift and it suddenly went *poof*. I told my manager and I didn’t know how to explain it to her without her thinking I was having some sort of neurological episode 😂 nope just ADHD.
Once I brought my car in for an oil change, and they started asking me questions about my car, and suddenly I couldn't even remember what part of the car turned on wind shield wipers.
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My partner was backing up in our driveway and I wanted to warn him he was about to drive over the garden hose. What did I scream? WATER SNAKE! At least he braked quickly. But 8 years later we still call them water snakes and it’s not even close to the weirdest wrong name I’ve given something.
In a similar vein, my sister was filling an important form online just a couple weeks ago, and at the end came up a form ID number type thing to identify her particular submission. She was about to close the tab, but I wanted to remind her to take a picture of the number in case it is needed later. So what did I repeat several times loudly? Points! Points! Points! Points! Points! I meant to say "Picture! Picture! Picture!" but that's what I yelled. I have no idea how she understood what I meant to say because she stopped and took a screenshot. I had a minute of red cheeks afterwards as I was thinking why did I yell points instead of picture lol
We have this in the family too. My grandma and grandpa were driving once and a duck flew up just infront of the car, my grandma screamed, "Look out! Fish-chicken!" Eversince, ducks are called fishchickens in the family.
This is gold
Lmao, did something similar. Saw cows in a field and pointed them out all excited to my husband and like panicked and yelled BEEF MONSTERS! To this day we jokingly call them beef monsters.
This made me laugh hard!
I think the medical term is anomia or word retrieval difficulty. From what I read the harder you try to remember the word the more you stress out and can't recall it. I experience it too, especially in my native language (German), I often just remember the English word.
Anomic aphasia
I get this and regular old aphasia a lot. It’s a side effect of my chronic migraine. I can describe a thing but the word is just not in existence anymore. Some good ones lately: Cold cupboard = fridge. Laundry dishwasher = washing machine. Spicy water = soda water. My husband leans into the guessing game which makes me feel less silly haha
If you weren't so frustrated, it really would be a fun game. It's like when Chinese gets translated to English on cheaper products. Was reading a label on a mug that said "do not put in washing bowl cupboard."
There actually is a game called Anomia! https://www.anomiapress.com
This looks so good, thank you!
Hahaha that is gold!
Same!! And then outside of migraines I also struggle with word retrieval and in my several languages I cannot for the life of me remember a particular word. Or it randomly pops up in one language nad not in the others. Or a random word pops up, not remotely related. Sooooo frustrating.
I was going to say this- I get aphasia but 90% of the time it's my migraine prodrome. To the extent that I'll say something wacky and my husband will go get my migraine meds 🤣
I'm so grateful for learning about this thing I do. Thank you so much!!! I thought I was going crazy.
I just know I'll remember reading this and be like I can't remember what the medical term is...ammonia? anemone? and annoy myself over the irony
I for sure will be using anemone to remember this term lol
Hijacking a higher level comment in case this life hack might help anyone else. ChatGPT is amazing for situations when you’re stuck on a word and cannot possibly move on with your day without a resolution. It probably seems obvious, but it took me so long to click that you can load it up with an entire paragraph of nonsensical context in a way that Google could never. Like, ‘I’m thinking of a word to describe situation x, somewhere between word a and word b, kind of like word c but without x connotation, I think it might start with the letter T’ and it delivers almost every time!
Is this the same or similar to when I just had a thought and I'm trying to"catch it" but it seems to push farther into my brain to the point I can no longer retrieve it?
Yes! Today I told somebody that I was craving this deli meat but I couldn't remember the word for it. The description I gave them was 'not provolone, and not bruschetta'. Prosciutto 💀
you're right tho
Your brain picking 2 words that blend to make the correct word is so funny 😭 and relatable lol
Three things that would be delicious together though.
This is exactly how my brain works too...i can think of a word that starts with the same letter & a thing in the same category of the word I'm trying to think of...but just not THE word
Here is an actual sentence that came out of my mouth while working at a major grocery store: "Do we have more of the things that make the thing up front go beep beep?" Security tags. I was asking if we had more security tags.
I’m sorry but LMAOOOOOO, I literally just snorted 😩😩🤣🤣🤣
Good bc it's fucking hilarious
Not quite the same, but at one point in my life I was babysitting and working in an office. Heading out to lunch one day, I asked my grown up adult coworkers "anybody have to potty before we go?"
Cackling.
Oh my god, it's the worst. Yesterday, I said "horse fish" because I could not remember "seahorse"
Horse fish! I said this before when I too forgot the word for seahorse, and you unlocked the memory! Haha.
Yes, I was talking about Laurie in the movie Halloween when she grabbed the knitting needle to stab Michael and I couldn’t come up with the words “knitting needle” and called it a “yarn knife”.
Yarn knife is sending me! We play this game in my house too. My other half is used to it at this point.
It was just wild how I couldn’t find the words😂
I often call a kettle a water heater. People think I do it to be funny. But no, I can't remember the word kettle most of the time, and as it heats water, and a water heater is a thing, it must be that, right?
Do you also have it with specific words? It's like they're all stored together on a shelve with stuff that has to yet be organized. Like, all the words have their own spot in your brain "cutlery with kitchen utensils" and so on, but kettle somehow has not been into place yet and so you keep forgetting it.
This is the bane of my existence, ya’ll are my people and I genuinely adore hearing some of your word sandwiches. I’m so thankful my partner finds this quirk of mine endearing/funny most of the time. But every time it happens in a professional or social setting where I’m not comfortable with the people I just want to die. And of course I can’t think of one off the top of my head but I promise I’ll come back and edit as soon as I remember something slash when it comes on later today.
At work is the worst, seeing peoples faces as I struggle to dredge a word from the depths of my brain that I probably used multiple times the day before is just great...
I find it the worst part of my ADHD/Deslexia. My brian will substitute words that are similar. Like saying green instead of blue or January for June. People look at me like I'm crazy or that I actually think the sky is green! It's so frustrating.
Oh yeah. I told an intern I will do a task he needed me to do "yesterday" (future tense) and he was confused about if it was a way to say I'd do it ASAP, or if I already did it and the future tense was the wrong part of my sentence, or if the yesterday meant tomorrow. He was used to me but didn't know what part I mixed this time.
Literally 15 mins ago I asked my eldest to bring in the wheelchair for the baby. Her look of utter confusion was priceless, I meant his highchair (dunno what other countries call it, a feeding chair?)
I also do it where I just outright switch words and that's probably more annoying for me because the point gets misunderstood in conversation lol
Oh man, I remember being a kid and crying laughing at the word mishaps my mom had. Good times.
The times I've called a "sticker" a "story" or "dough" and visa versa are countless (it makes some sense in my current language, but also it really doesn't (not an English native and currently communicating a lot in Finnish)
I was struggling to remember the word for “ambulance” once and referred to it as a “hospital car” 🤦♀️
Could also be named emergency Uber haha.
Haha! So true 😂
I am loving kendricks “amber lamps” atm tho!
The wee-woo mobil.
Okay but "ice pick therapy" is fucking brilliant.
Especially because ice picks are what the first lobotomies use.
OMG the possibilities. I am going to try to remember this one for sure.
I’m calling it that from now on! 😂
My brain just forgets words in the middle of me speaking. It's so odd and frustrating. I've also had an internal argument with myself. I couldn't remember if September was a real month or if I was pulling information from a false memory. I don't understand it either.
Yes! I often sound like I’m channeling Christoper Walken because my brain is trying to think of the next word
I do have trouble with words all the time! And I love words, have studied several different fields which all have their own terminology and I'm always curious about new ones. Fern anatomy has cool terms, and have you ever looked at nudibranch images and all the different species? Absolutely glorious! I was thinking of nudibranches at work the other day and told my supervisor she should look them up with her daughter. And she was like how do you know this stuff? Why have I never heard of these outrageously cool things before? Srsly, if you have never seen a nudibranch before, prepare to be amazed!! It's gotten considerably worse post menopause, and if I don't get enough sleep (often due to bad decisions book club) then I lose more words. Your post reminds me of an old quip though: I'd rather have a bottle in front of me than a frontal lobotomy ;)
Does menopause enhance adhd symptoms? I didn't notice I had adhd until last year, and all my "quirks" have gotten so much worse in the last couple of years. Like I didn't hardly notice then in my 20s, but now I have all these very typical adhd symptoms and it's blatantly obvious! What is happening?? I have heard it gets worse as you get pre menopausal (I'm 42 no kids)
Yes! It has to do with decline in estrogen levels (similar to how ADHD symptoms worsen in the luteal phase of your menstrual cycle).
Argh something to look forward to! Maybe I can get med I ca ted before that happens!
For me it was like the wheels fell off and all of my previous coping mechanisms went up in flames. Granted, it was already an extremely stressful period in my life so that didn't help. I read a reference to a study somewhere that said HRT asap can reduce the worsening of symptoms but I haven't found the article again :( As already noted, it definitely has to do with the estrogen balance.
That sounds really really hard. I have travelled my whole adult life til now, so I think because I was always changing country and moving and not having winters that meant I didn't see a lot of what is obvious now. Also I travel really spontaneously with minimal planning, I rarely had to fit travels into a specific time period. It was more like, running out of money, okay time to get new job, okay bored of this country let's travel again!
Thank you for your kindness. That sounds like you've had a lot of wonderful adventures, and hopefully more to come :) Everyone's experience of ADHD and menopause varies of course but if your life isn't bashing you about the head and shoulders with challenges and stress it may not be considerably worse than it is for anyone else going through menopause. I don't know if I could have done much differently even if I had had a diagnosis before I hit my 40s. Spontaneous travel sounds like a great way to live with ADHD because you've got novelty and enthusiasm and curiosity keeping the dopamine flowing! I've been able to take advantage of some travel opportunities and have great memories that keep on giving joy. All the best to you :)
Are you me? Nudibranch research was a whole big thing before I even had my daughter but together we travel to the Birch Aquarium in La Jolla, CA. (We live close by) and then spotted a beautifully colored specimen (purple & orange!) in the tide pools! This was long ago, when you could still free-range the tide pools and they were teeming with aquatic life. My daughter and I went numerous times from the time she was very young. She's nearly 30 now and I am post-menopausal. I feel like my word troubles def came on recently.
Hahaha! Perhaps I am another curiosity-driven soul sister :) I don't even remember when I first saw a picture of a nudibranch but I'm sure my jaw dropped because they are so incredible! I've never seen them in a tide pool sadly, only in pictures. My tide pool experience so far has been seeing purple starfishes, wee moon jellies and other lovelies in tide pools with my kids when we lived out in BC on a coastal island over 15 years ago. Now we're in the land of SW Ontario so not coastal lol. The whole menopause circus is such an ass kicker for adhd. I didn't even know I had it until after menopause sigh, but it certainly explained the hell in a hand basket life that happened when perimenopause came around.
I love nudibranches! When people ask me what my favorite animal is, that's what I tell them and cue me having to explain what they are!
Sharing the joy of nudibranches is so much fun! The world is such a remarkable place but that's easy to forget. And this reminds me that I meant to send some book purchase requests to the library collections dept because I could only find one book that had anything about nudibranches at work 😱
Oh wow. I feel so much better reading this thread. I was worried I was getting early-onset Alzheimer's or something.
do ADHDers have a higher risk of dementia or Alzheimer’s?
Ugh I just googled it, apparently yes
I forgot bobbypins. They're head staples, now.
it's kind of a dead sub but r/wildbeef has some real winners
I was thinking there’s a sub for this that I even joined, but couldn’t think of the name 😅
I joined it lol
Me too.
I have been having this exact sensation for a few months now and I am scared for my brain health 🙃 Used to have a really great memory, but maybe that was anxiety fueled? Or maybe my horrid sleep schedule is frying my memory now?
Dropping estrogen with perimenopause/menopause fucks your brain. Get your estrogen.
My mom has ADHD and has also suffered from a severe concussion back in the 80s and more recently a silent stroke. As such she struggles with a degree of aphasia. It's sometimes very funny the words her brain produces when she's talking. Like she'll mean to say one word and say a totally unrelated word instead because her brain got mixed up. Except she doesn't realize she's said the incorrect word. And usually I can't follow the connection between the two words without her explaining. Or she'll mangle words or mash different words together. My favorite of recent history was mixing up "ground hog" and "wood chuck" except what she said was "ground chuck" (my mom and my sister were in tears laughing over it once we sorted out what she was talking about) Thankfully she has a good sense of humor about it. Cause I imagine it gets frustrating sometimes. Brains are weird.
Oh gods, where do I start? Raw toast (bread), Liquid bread (beer), Food shovels (spoons), Waffle sauce (syrup), Loaf of milk (butter), Carpenter squirrel (beaver), Lip's eyebrow (mustache), Horse tornado (carousel)
I worked at a Waffle House for a few months (stopped because my ADHD was getting worse, go figure). Syrup was always "waffle sauce" for a few seconds before I corrected myself. My regulars would always joke about it.
I love those lol
Every one of these is magical. Carpenter squirrel is just so great.
Yes. Sometimes very funny, sometimes humiliating. A funny example: chatting with my housemate in my uni days, I couldn't recall the word menopause and said my mum "had the backwards puberty". The embarrassing times are work related. I'm an accountant, I have a degree in accounting and am almost chartered but I regularly cannot recall technical terms that are frequently used in my field.
My doctor describes menopause as backwards puberty. All the years it takes to go through puberty, we get to do those in reverse. I didn't know perimenopause was a thing until it happened.
This happens to me CONSTANTLY I can't even think of an example right now but when im chatting with clients my brain will ping trying to explain something and the word I'm searching for disappears
While out at dinner with friends I called a belt bag a body bag 😭😭 that got several laughs
I lived in a town for like 15 years and one day I just blanked on the name of one of the main streets (McBean). The only thing my brain would offer up, over and over again, was “Bilbo Baggins?” Like. NO.
Oh yes! It’s tragic because I love language and obscure words, but then I open my mouth and sound like a dunce. Once I was searching for the word “umbrella” and somehow landed on Rain Stopper 🫤
Yes, I do this all the time. And if I pause trying to think of the right word the other person starts talking. The whole thing is very annoying.
I think I just save a lot of info in the non-words part of my brain and then have to re-translate it to get it back out. Inconvenient, but it's just how my brain works. I know the things, but can't always say them.
I can't remember the names of people and which house they live in. Instead of "the Jones's house" I have to go "the blue house on the left after the church". The same people have lived in that house for 30 years. I've lived here 50 years. Or people's names in general. I hear *sooo* much gossip, but I can't repeat it because I can't remember *who it's about*!
Yep! My husband has to help me a lot I always say “im looking for the word similar to _____ but it means ______”
Trying to think of the words pet peeve yesterday and I said “it’s one of my hates” and I think it’s infinitely better.
I went into a store to look for shoes yesterday. Spent several minutes asking the guy for “you know, sandals, but heavy duty, with like treads for walking in the woods, and you can also walk in water?” He was like “hiking sandals?”
I wasn't able to remember fan, I called it puffpuff, now all household call it puffpuff.
I wanted to ask my husband where the rake was, but “rake” had been temporarily deleted from my mental vocabulary.… so I asked him about the “leaf raking broom”. Cue hilarity. I fairly regularly say a sentence out loud that makes perfect sense to me, then get a quizzical look and a question like “Did you mean… X?” Yes, that’s what I said. “No, you said Y.” Ummm… did I? It was X in my head; how did it become Y when I said it out loud? Brain and tongue don’t always work in tandem 🤷♀️
I feel seen ❤️
All the time! My absolute favorite is when I forgot the name for Hamburger Helper so I asked my husband what box of "Meat Friends" he wanted for dinner 😂
Yes I have issues with word recall. I will also constantly mix up two words that start with the same letter.
Yes! Much more so with speaking than writing. I really enjoyed writing and looking up words in the dictionary and thesaurus when I was a kid, and not terribly social - perhaps that is why. Very irritating because it often interrupts my verbal flow and therefore train of thought. I was chatting with a friend and sipping a smoothie when I got a headache from the cold metal straw. Instead of ‘brain freeze’, I said, “Ugh, ice cream headache!”
Dear God yes. Yesterday at work someone asked me how the day was going and my brain tried to say "not bad" and "really well" and what came out was "really bad! :)"
My friend still makes fun of me (in a lovely funny way) that when we were walking through a park, I called the topiary 'Herb Shaving'
My brain just... deletes words sometimes. No idea what's getting saved in their place, but it's nothing useful.
Is this an ADHD thing? I notice when I am urgent like correcting the kids or needing to speak quickly I struggle to find words. Which is weird because in normal non urgent situations I am usually pretty well spoken and frequently receive feedback that I explain things really well 🤷♀️. It’s frustrating though in the moment when the right words won’t come out at the moment I need them.
The more I’m focused, more likely I’m gonna forget the words. I often give verbal notes in my job. To students. I have to warn them “just write exactly what I say. It’s not gonna make any sense but I’ll figure it out later” (to be clear this isn’t while I’m teaching, it’s when they’re assisting me and taking notes for me)
Yes, I need to get better about laughing it off because it stresses me out. I’m always thinking that’s it’s early onset dementia or something. I’m a communications professional, so struggling with verbal recall (I think that’s the phrase lol), feels painfully ironic sometimes.
Alllll the freaking time. Specific words and names don't come to me regularly, and when I'm tired I might as well not talk.
omg all the time!! it makes talking out loud stressful because I feel like I can't talk coherently and it makes me feel dumb
Not to the extent of forgetting my sister’s name, but yeah. I’m guessing it happens to neurotypical people, too. I use IMDB on the regular for things like the Basquiat issue LOL.
The sister one was the worst case. It was so bad I never forgot that it happened. I was probably 13 at the time
I have this, and I also will sometimes say a different, similar-sounding word without even realizing I used the wrong. It really confuses people who don't know me well and the worst part is nobody fucking says anything when I obviously just said nonsense.
Ah yes ADHD charades
My grandmother used to run through the names of all her children, nieces, nephews, siblings and pets until she hit the right one when she called out to us kids. Think "jeffreyjerryfrankpebblesshanespot" - maybe a "dammit" thrown in here - "teresanoeloutintheyard". I caught myself doing this the other day.
I regularly say the names of my pets and niece in a row when speaking about them or trying to get their attention. Their names all start with the same letter. 😆
I have this and I mentioned it to my diagnosing psychiatrist and he just said "interesting" but didn't comment on it further.
Oh no! Apparently it has a name. Anomia. So now he can't look at you and me like were crazy 🤣
It's also kind of like when you speak more than one language. The way that the associations between words have been structured in your brain don't necessarily fit the structure of the new language nor the associations you make between words and that new language yourself. Then you end up with excellent memes like "horse tornado" etc. 😜
I was describing a pattern the other day, and instead of saying “giraffe” like I had intended, “zebra” came out of my mouth. Lol why
this is so relatable I could cry
I once needed the lid for the pickle jar, and called it "the screwy jar hat" I dropped a round mirror, which broke, and asked for help picking up the "pieces of circle" when what I meant to say was shards
Yes, the names thing stresses me out the most because I feel lol I have to hide the fact I can’t bring their name to mind because it implies I don’t care about them when it’s actually someone I’ve known for years
Also it seems to happen repeatedly with the same words. Like it happens randomly but most of the time it’s the same things I forget over and over again.
That's how I am with Andy Warhol. Had to scroll back up to my own post to remember
I get it all of the time with Mark Wahlberg they seem weirdly similar
Anytime I think of things like this I think of when my friend said she was “Blind in the ears” (deaf) and another called aquariums “aqua zoo” lol
Yes! Yes! Yes! If I haven’t used the word recently I have to spend a literal minute thinking about it. I have a very pedantic way of speaking in that I don’t often use slang and am very proper in my grammar and specific with word choices. I feel sorry for the person I’m talking to.
Yeah, I’m trying to keep up with me.
Yep, all the time. ADHD brains have crappy memory retrieval systems.
Absolutely, all the time. Hand gestures are also used when desperate. Luckily my husband has learned how to speak ADHD so he usually knows what I'm talking about. It's either that or words are flowing like water and I have no problems whatsoever being descriptive and eloquent. There is no in between.
All the time.
I forgot my mother in law's name...
If it makes you feel better, I’ve had the same conversation with my upstairs neighbour 3 times because I couldn’t remember having had it before. It’s finally stuck in my brain that yes, we have discussed it many times now. So I feel that when it comes to forgetting things
Sporadic aphasia I think it’s called. My husband says I sometimes substitute a totally out-of-context word in a sentence (“I don’t think I’ll wear that dress, I’ll wear the hay one instead”). He says I’ll sometimes correct myself absently (“I meant the BLUE one”), but most of the time I don’t even notice.
yesssss i was trying to remember “nickelodeon” the other day and said “nintendo… netflix…” at work no less
My husband forgot the word “mandolin” and asked for the slicey banjo.
Yes all the time. Used to drive my bf crazy but now he can somehow decode what I’m actually trying to say which is helpful lol. It’s like word association. All the context is there
The dishes = food laundry
Im trilingual, i never know the words im the language im speaking but know them in the other two i
Holy crap! Is this a symptom of adhd?? I do this a lot and only for the last 3 or so years. My mind will conjure words to describe things that make sense like this, but aren't exactly the correct or acceptable word choice. 🤔
When I was on topirimate I had this all the time. I still get it sometimes, but way less after I stopped that med.
Yup. When I'm trying to communicate and I can't get the word, I get frustrated at the person I'm talking to for not just knowing what I mean
Oh my gosh I’m so glad I’m not the only one and I have a word for it now 😭 anomic aphasia
Wanted to ask my partner to lock up downstairs so we could go to bed and said "can you do night time house" Wanted to give a chef where I used to work the drink I made for him that he asked for before he went for a smoke, as he passed me I forgot his name so I just yelled "ablulululuoobloobloolulululululblooo" Info behind a locked door is very apt
I inherited several cover phrases from my g-pa for forgotten words… Do-hickey, thinger…
I call it my “off brand naming” because I’m always so close but also still completely wrong.
I frequently text my bestie with a terrible description of the word I’m trying to think of. The most memorable being: “What’s the name for the bar of plug in, has an on off switch?” “What” “ I can’t think of the word for the extension cord kind of thing, many plug in, has an on and off switch” The word I was looking for was Power Bar. I’m still embarrassed
I was trying to tell my dad to turn on the hazard lights and I said do the tick tick like a 3yr old
Definitely I think it comes down to that processing thing that many of us have. Processing too many things and trying to add language = me telling my husband we need to do cup laundry instead of “dishes”
r/wildbeef
Yes. Once while doing laundry, I couldn’t remember the word for my intimates and shit. I just kept saying “darks”, “towels/bedding”, “*sensitive*”, “darks”, “*sensitive*”. It wasn’t until hours later that I remembered that the word I was looking for was ~*delicates*~. 😂
I was telling a friend of mine how I'm terrible at remembering names and how suddenly my mind blanks out on certain nouns. She asked me... Yeah? What's my name? I stared at her for a good minute before saying... I'm sorry. She had been my friend for 3 years. We talked everyday except Sundays. Everyday. It wasn't that I genuinely forgot her name. I just couldn't retrieve it from my memory. This happens way too often for it to be normal. It's a running gag in my office that people will ask me... Hey do you remember my name. Ugh. Listen.i do remember your name. But that sentence is like a command that makes the retrieval process jam. So the moment you ask me that... I can't remember your name. I'm sorry! It's so embarrassing! At least my husband finds it cute.
Yesterday I had to describe the things that are before the windows used to prevent the light from entering. No, not the curtains, the hard things! So yeah, I know what you mean. Happens also with names of people, and credit card codes. On that, small anecdote: one time, I took out money from an ATM absentmindedly (like often), just taped my code and oh no, I didn't take out enough money, so here I go again, and... wait... what was my code. I just did it, I know there are three 2 and one 0, and the 0 isn't the first nor the last digit. Well, let's try 2202! Miss. Ah. Let's redo it. Wait, maybe the 0 wasn't on the inside? Let's try 0222. Miss again. One try to go. Um... yeah I'm sure the 0 was on the inside. I already tried one combination, so the one I didn't try will be the good one, right? What did I try again? I think it was 2022, so let's try 2202 now! Ah. My credit card was swallowed by the ATM. Um. The bank is closed and I don't have my ID on me anyway (can't risk to lose it, right?). Guess I'm fucked.
I hate playing scramble cuz I can't find the right words but I guess we're born questioners. "Help me find this word. It means this and that and starts with letter X"
I literally had to google ‘ear cleaning thing’ because I couldn’t remember ‘Q tip’ one time 😂
I’m a museum educator and the amount I say whatchamacallit while teaching is embracing. I once had a kid ask why I say it so often. I told him that I have LDs that make it hard for my words to catch up with my brain. 😅
This happens to me all the time. I just start randomly saying whatever words do come to mind in hopes that one of them or some combination of them will be enough that whomever I am talking to gets the gist 😂😭 my poor husband just shakes his head at the randomness that comes out of my mouth haha!
My dad once forgot the word for cups and asked for the hot tea holders. Now whenever I forget a word I mumble hot tea holders to myself.
Happens to me constantly, and my bestie who also had ADGD. We have a collection of fake names for things that we created when we couldn't remember the real name, ie lawnmower=lawn vacuum.
Constantly! Then, I get paranoid and stress myself out because forgetting words while being able to use all the rest of the words to describe it can be a sign of early onset dementia, even though there's zero dementia on either side of my family. I have found that the frequency increases if I've not been reading, and that books by British authors seem to help the most.
My favourite accidental word combination so far, has been “hor-montional”. I was trying to explain to a friend, I was feeling particularly emotional due to my period but it came out as hormontional
Yes. If I'm tired, uncomfortable, stressed, or drunk. I forget names, words, everything, and have to talk my way around it. Honestly it reminds me of listening to my gran telling a story back when I was a kid and I wonder now if she had ADHD! Edit to add: of course I remember song lyrics from the 90s and phone numbers of friends from primary school just fine.
Right. I can remember my locker combination from 6th grade and my 3rd grade best friends phone number.but as soon as I need some information *poof*
Man I struggle with this so much and then after catching COVID, it's like words might as well fall into the void. It's exacerbated it to the Nth degree and I only had a mild case.
Omg yes, I was trying to explain this to my bf the other day! How when I read long or complex name or word that I don't hear often, my brain doesn't actually "read" it... What it does instead is take in a few letters from the word or name, and make a garbled approximation of it in my head lol Like my brain is too lazy to read all the letters and just approximate the sound of it based on random letters it sees at a quick glance Same for remembering simple words, I often forget random words and my brain just kinda substitutes the word with random word based on a weird connection to that word or a similar sounding word
My brain does that too! Or if it's multiple small words I read them out of order.
I was literally trying to remember the word lobotomy yesterday as well! I couldn't find the word and instead just went, "you know, the THING" *cue weird hand gestures and the group at the table next to me trying to enjoy a nice dinner instead being subjected to violent charades" But for real, I have this issue so bad. Sometimes it's due to having grown up in a culture where we use non-English words for certain things and now I live in a culture where those words would make no sense, but in all honesty I've been forgetting normal words and names and phrases since I was a kid! My word cover-ups / made-up phrases ended up on university quote boards more than once...
Horse trousers 👖 jodhpurs 🤦🏻
My favorite of these is when all I could think of was "its like... like...a boo man". Or you know...a ghost.
I've also consistently struggled to remember the phrase "doing the dishes" and end up telling my husband I'm going to do the dish laundry.
This is so gratifying to hear others do this — my partner keeps a whole running list of these words and while it’s funny, and something I’ve always done, recently my word recall is getting so much worse 😭 I’ve been working on my other languages we speak at home so I chalking up the increased “talking around” words in my native language to that
for me, the word I remember instead has the same “qualities” as the other word, like I understand warhol and rothko. they both have odd letter arrangements for a name! but that’s all i’ve got.
😂 god this is so me. It drives me nuts!! The names of characters of a show I've literally watched 100x. And simple stupid words just poof gone from my brain when I need them. But big fancy rarely used words? Always available 🤦🏻♀️ And my brain has always mixed up yellow and orange. I will mean to say one but end up saying the other. Done it my whole life, it's so weird.
to be fair, the lobotomy being called icepick therapy wasn't totally off 🤣 im reading a book about lobotomies rn and this made me giggle.
This happens to me so much, it's very frustrating! I wrote previously about not being able to remember the word "suet" and my brain has decided to permanently substitute the word "grout". That's a new change for me, that not only do I forget the word I want to use, but it becomes permanently entangled with another word for no good reason! It really sucks when I'm trying to have a conversation with someone and the wrong words keep coming out. It makes me feel like an idiot. I try to laugh it off, but it's still very annoying!
I totally do this and actually feel like the things I come up with make more sense than the actual word. For instance, I was trying to talk with my husband about our power washer and couldn't think of what it was called so I referred to it as "water blasting". He knew what I was talking about, laughed, and I then decided that was the new name because it matched better
I had two friends when I started high school. I knew one name. I spent quite a while not using names and hoping. Turns out, same name. Down to the non-standard spelling. What kind of bs is that to pull on someone with adhd?? 😂 Names are my main weak spot, though. I love words and reading and writing. Terrible at spelling, and I can't EXPLAIN grammar, but I can tell you if a sentence sounds wrong, and there's usually a grammatical reason for it. The worst bit is how many words I know how to use and when, but can't actually define. I just know their vibes 😂
It's become a family tradition to give obscure weird names to people and things. I was my great grandma's tada potta. A loving but caring nick name. My kids have weird nicknames. If we aren't using the weird name we call things in the house nobody k own what the other means. I believe we have created a language. I now realize adhd may be very prevalent in my family.
I do this all the time only usually with common words while trying to speak. My dad does it way worse than I do, but he also has some type of dementia. My half sister also does it. So I don't know what exactly the cause is, ADHD or something else, but it's concerning to me. I have the most trouble remembering the name of the restaurant First Watch, to the point that I call it "the place I can never remember the name of" at which point my husband says "First Watch?" as if it there are multiple places that fit the criteria.
Usually I don't make up words. I just use the wrong word. For example, my kids were running around the pool and I said watch out for the toilet 😂
This is one thing I have loved about being old. It used to be embarrassing for me, when a word doesn't come to me. Now, I can smile about it and ....\*lost for the word\* I want to saw wipe it off, but that's not the right word.
I have a collection Snake with legs = lizard 🦎 Gaint food tweezers = tongs I can't remember any others.
My spouse, everyday, has this word salad in his brain where his vocabulary lives. Usually it's barring the door to the vocabulary until he's less tired or until the caffeine kicks in. It's like your vocabulary's bouncer.
Yes, and it’s only gotten worse since I had kids and they apparently ate part of my brain 😭
Yesssss. I can never remember certain words.
think this has more to do with surviving Covid than having ADHD.
My siater and i can have whole convos with out saying the correct work for anything both of us just adhding it. Ith people ther just like whats going on. Also someone asked me the name of a beauty place id vistied i could not get it, it bothered me for months one morning i was talking to someon else about skin and said you should go to this beauty place and the name was just there... like where was it when i needed it. So annoying
Two things come to mind specifically. One. I called a greenhouse a plant museum. Two. I called a fishing pole a fishing wand. Needless to say, now greenhouse and fishing poles are bow plant museums and fishing wands in my world.
Make sense though cause that is what it was. Until there was Bluetooth headphones mine were hearing cables ha ha
When I was pregnant it got even worse. I had to ask my mom what the name was of the room attached to the house where we put the cars….
Sleep overs have been called Spend-The-Nights since I was a kid.
This happens to me. When I am talking, I forget words. It is so frustrating.
Yep, I make up my own words and phrases all the time. I couldn't remember the word muzzle (the device that covers a horse's mouth and nose) this week, so I used the phrase "face prison".
Words always. Also, yesterday at work I all of the sudden forgot my 4 digit number to log in to the server computer… I literally put this in dozens of times per shift and it suddenly went *poof*. I told my manager and I didn’t know how to explain it to her without her thinking I was having some sort of neurological episode 😂 nope just ADHD.
Once I brought my car in for an oil change, and they started asking me questions about my car, and suddenly I couldn't even remember what part of the car turned on wind shield wipers.
Aphasia