Why am I forgetting words mid sentence? The science.

Commonly, people feel like they are forgetting words mid sentence. And I am here to tell you that this feeling is normal. Like, really normal. Below I outline relevant research about the topic, and possible solutions to forgetting words mid sentence.

The feeling of forgetting words mid sentence, often refered to as “tip-of-the-tongue state” by language scientists, happens to everyone. Though, it does seem to happen more as people get older.

It is so common that there is even a subreddit with around 2.5 million users!

In 1966, Brown and McNeill documented the issue. They said that the tip-of-the-tongue phenomenon is “[a] nearly universal experience, occur about once a week, [and increases] with age.”

Also, the tip-of-the-tongue (TOT) state is thought to happen more with uncommon words. According to Harley and Brown, the TOT state happens more with “low-frequency words that have few close phonological neighbours.” Low-frequency words are words that are less commonly used. The phonological neighbour to a target word is a word that differs only by one sound (such as “cat” and “bat”). Basically, words that are isolated in your mind can be harder to pinpoint.

Struggling to find words mid sentence is incredibly frustrating. Luckily, there are solutions.

1. Thinking “around” the word.

Thinking around the word is a commonly used strategy to find that word you are blanking on. As described in this article, thinking around the word DOES seem to be scientifically backed.

2. Blanked

Blanked is a platform that allows you to just describe the word you are looking for, and the AI does the rest. It is an extension of the “thinking around the word” method, and can be very useful to find the word you are forgetting mid sentence.