''Look at the head on that'', she thought. ''It looked as if he slept face down in a box of pineapples'' |
This is the tendency for the naming of something to create an impression of imparting an understanding of it.
It applies, for example, to the naming of mental disorders: a person who tells implausible lies may be said to be suffering from pseudologia fantastica, but that term is nothing more than a name for implausible lying, and any impression that it imparts an understanding of the phenomenon is a cognitive illusion.
The phenomenon is named after Rumpelstiltskin. In a famous fairy tale called 'Rumpelstilzchen' in the German version collected by the brothers Grimm, a strange dwarf exerts a baleful influence over a miller's daughter until she eventually gains power over him by learning his name.
(Colman, 2009)
(Colman, 2009)
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