prosopagnosia
/ˌpɹɒsəpaɡˈnəʊʒə/noun
prosopagnosia is a noun meaning “A form of visual agnosia characterized by difficulty with face recognition despite intact low-level visual processing” (English Wiktionary, September 2026). It is spelled P-R-O-S-O-P-A-G-N-O-S-I-A, and it appears about once in every 21 million words in written English (wordfreq, 2021 data). The plural of prosopagnosia is prosopagnosias.
What does prosopagnosia mean?
noun
- 1
A form of visual agnosia characterized by difficulty with face recognition despite intact low-level visual processing.
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).
How do you pronounce prosopagnosia?
- UK /ˌpɹɒsəpaɡˈnəʊʒə/
- UK /ˌpɹɒsəpaɡˈnəʊzɪə/
- UK /ˌpɹɒsəpaɡˈnəʊsɪə/
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract). Recordings: En-us-prosopagnosia.ogg, Wikimedia Commons (author and licence on each file's page).
Forms of prosopagnosia
- prosopagnosias plural
- prosopoagnosia
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).
How common is prosopagnosia?
Prosopagnosia appears about once in every 21 million words in written English, the 138,319th 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).
Prosopagnosia in Spanish, French, German and Portuguese
In the sense disorder of face perception:
| Language | Words |
|---|---|
| French | prosopagnosie |
| German | Prosopagnosie |
| Portuguese | prosopagnosia |
| Spanish | prosopagnosia |
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 prosopagnosia come from?
Borrowed from German Prosopagnosie (see there for more). By surface analysis, prosop- + agnosia.
Source: English Wiktionary, dump of September 2, 2026 (CC BY-SA 4.0), through kaikki.org (Wiktextract).