apophenia
/æpəˈfiːni.ə/noun
apophenia is a noun meaning “The perception of or belief in connectedness among unrelated phenomena” (English Wiktionary, September 2026). It is spelled A-P-O-P-H-E-N-I-A, and it appears about once in every 62 million words in written English (wordfreq, 2021 data). The plural of apophenia is apophenias.
What does apophenia mean?
noun
- 1
The perception of or belief in connectedness among unrelated phenomena.
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).
How do you pronounce apophenia?
- /æpəˈfiːni.ə/
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).
Forms of apophenia
- apophenias plural
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).
How common is apophenia?
Apophenia appears about once in every 62 million words in written English, the 246,401st most frequent word form in the list.
Source: written frequency: wordfreq 3.1 (a 2021 snapshot of Wikipedia, subtitles, news, books, web text and social media).
Apophenia in Spanish, French, German and Portuguese
In the sense the perception of connectedness in unrelated phenomena:
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract). Translations are Wiktionary's, by sense; a linked word has its own PlainSpell page.
Where does apophenia come from?
From German Apophänie, from Ancient Greek ἀποφαίνω (apophaínō, “to appear”), from ἀπο- (apo-) and φαίνω (phaínō, “appear”), coined by German psychiatrist Klaus Conrad in 1958.
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).