pareidolia
noun
Pamela Ferdinand
Did you know?
If you’ve ever spotted an image of a dog or a shoe in the clouds, you’ve exhibited what is called pareidolia, the tendency to perceive a meaningful image in a random pattern. Pareidolia emerged in English in 1962, borrowed from the German word Pareidolie, itself a combination of the Greek prefix par-, the Greek noun eídōlon (“image, reflection”), and the German suffix -ie. But although the word may be relatively new to English speakers, the concept is not. During the Renaissance, for example, artists such as Giuseppe Arcimboldo—who painted collections of fruits, vegetables, and other objects to look like human portraits—used pareidolia as a technique in their work, while Leonardo da Vinci once wrote, “… if you look at any walls spotted with various stains or with a mixture of different kinds of stones, if you are about to invent some scene you will be able to see in it a resemblance to various different landscapes adorned with mountains, rivers, rocks, trees, plains, wide valleys, and various groups of hills.” So the next time you see the man or even a toad in the moon, you can think of your kinship with Da Vinci.
Examples of pareidolia in a Sentence
Phil Plait, Scientific American, 25 Oct. 2024
Hamilton views pareidolia as just one avenue where AI might advance cognitive science, and vice versa.
—Byhannah Richter, science.org, 4 Oct. 2024
But that’s not the weirdest stellar pareidolia in the sky.
—Phil Plait, Scientific American, 28 June 2024
This image reflects our ability to look at something and discern a meaningful image in an otherwise random pattern, a tendency known as pareidolia.
—Eric Berger, Ars Technica, 31 Oct. 2023
The human propensity to see familiar objects in ambiguous patterns is called pareidolia.
—Stephanie Pappas, Scientific American, 17 May 2023
Partly that's down to the design of the lights, which should set off your pareidolia, and partly down to what now passes for a relatively low hood height, with curved edges finding favor over sharp creases at the corners.
—Jonathan M. Gitlin, Ars Technica, 6 July 2022
To find out whether monkeys experience face pareidolia, the scientists studied five rhesus macaques in the lab.
—Elizabeth Preston, Discover Magazine, 25 Aug. 2017
Compared to healthy controls, patients with Alzheimer's disease did not experience any more pareidolia than controls.
—Neuroskeptic, Discover Magazine, 1 June 2012
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Cite this Entry
“Pareidolia.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/pareidolia. Accessed 28 Nov. 2024.
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pareidolia
noun
New Scientist
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