Aphantasic

Part of speech: adjective

Definitions

1. Unable to form mental pictures in the mind's eye, making visualization of scenes, faces, or objects impossible
2. Characterized by the inability to create or recall visual images mentally, resulting in a blank mental canvas
3. Describes a condition where a person cannot generate visual imagery internally, affecting memory and imagination

Etymology: Aphantasia was named only in 2015, when neurologist Adam Zeman and colleagues published a paper describing people who could not voluntarily picture images in their minds. The label was built from Greek: the prefix "a-" meaning "without" and "phantasia," meaning "appearance" or "imagination," itself from "phantazein," "to make visible." The Greek noun also gave English "fantasy" and "phantom," so this coinage is a close relative of words that originally meant something visible or displayed. The adjective "aphantasic" follows the same pattern as the noun, formed by adding the English adjective ending "-ic" to "aphantasia." Zeman's team had reportedly first encountered the condition through a man who wrote to them after a documentary about visual imagery, and the term was devised to give that experience a name. Before 2015 people with this trait had no common word for it, so a description had to stand in.