phosphene
noun
phosphene is a noun meaning “A sensation of lights induced by mechanical, electrical, or magnetic stimulation (rather than optical) of the retina or visual cortex, or by random…” (English Wiktionary, September 2026). It is spelled P-H-O-S-P-H-E-N-E, and it appears about once in every 72 million words in written English (wordfreq, 2021 data). The plural of phosphene is phosphenes.
What does phosphene mean?
noun
- 1
A sensation of lights induced by mechanical, electrical, or magnetic stimulation (rather than optical) of the retina or visual cortex, or by random firing of cells in the visual system.
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).
Forms of phosphene
- phosphenes plural
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).
How common is phosphene?
Phosphene appears about once in every 72 million words in written English, the 269,040th 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).
Phosphene in Spanish, French, German and Portuguese
In the sense sensation of lights:
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 phosphene come from?
From French phosphène, from Ancient Greek φῶς (phôs, “light”) + φαίνω (phaínō, “to appear, shine”).
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).