''What is my name?'' ~ The Rumpelstiltskin Phenomenon

''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)

Typoglycemia

This refers to a neologism given to a purported recent discovery about the cognitive processes behind reading written text. The word does not refer to any actual medical condition related to hypoglycaemia. The word appears to be a portmanteau of "typo", as in typographical error, and "hypoglycaemia". It is an urban legend/Internet meme that appears to have an element of truth to it.

 

The legend, propagated by email and message boards, purportedly demonstrates that readers can understand the meaning of words in a sentence even when the interior letters of each word are scrambled. As long as all the necessary letters are present, and the first and last letters remain the same, readers appear to have little trouble reading the text.

 

Aoccdrnig to a rscheearch at Cmabrigde Uinervtisy, it deosn't mttaer in waht oredr the ltteers in a wrod are, the olny iprmoetnt tihng is taht the frist and lsat ltteer be at the rghit pclae. The rset can be a toatl mses and you can sitll raed it wouthit porbelm. Tihs is bcuseae the huamn mnid deos not raed ervey lteter by istlef, but the wrod as a wlohe.

 

 

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''Life can only be understood backwards; but it must be lived forwards.'' ~  Søren Kierkegaard