Dyslexie

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. A learning difficulty that makes it hard to recognise letters and words, causing slow or inaccurate reading despite normal intelligence
2. A neurological condition in which a person struggles to decode written text, often mixing up letters and reading very slowly
3. A language-based learning disorder marked by persistent trouble with reading accuracy, spelling and fluency that is not caused by low ability

Etymology: Rudolf Berlin, a German eye doctor, coined "Dyslexie" in German to describe people who struggled to read despite normal eyesight. He built it from the Greek prefix "dys-", meaning "bad" or "difficult", and "lexis", meaning "word" or "speech", from the verb "legein", "to speak". The term passed into other languages with its form largely intact. Dutch uses "dyslexie" as the ordinary word, and English took "dyslexia", the same Greek-based formation with a different ending. The Dutch form is the one this entry concerns, and it reads almost identically to the German original.