Can’t find the right words when speaking? What helps
When a word you know won’t come, describe what you mean and keep talking. Afterwards, look the word up and say it to yourself. In one study, people who struggled longer before being told a word were more likely to get stuck on it again two days later.
You would recognise the word instantly if someone said it, but in the middle of a sentence it has gone. Psychologists call this a tip-of-the-tongue state. Lise Abrams, a University of Florida researcher who has studied them for many years, calls these moments “common and natural”. They do get more frequent with age.
If speech problems start suddenly, such as slurred or confused words, the NHS lists this among the signs of a stroke: call 999 in the UK, or your local emergency number. If a change worries you over weeks or months, talk to a doctor.
Why a word you know goes missing
A word you know has a meaning and a sound. In a tip-of-the-tongue moment you reach the meaning but not the sound, so you can often describe the word, guess its first letter or count its syllables. Roger Brown and David McNeill showed this in 1966: people stuck on a word guessed its first letter and syllable count better than chance.
Rarely used words and people’s names go missing most often. Abrams explains that a word you seldom use has a weaker link to its sound. For names, she suggests using them more: a colleague’s name in a meeting, or a neighbour’s when you say hello.
In the moment: keep talking
The listener needs your meaning, and a long pause costs more than a plain word. Instead of searching:
- Describe it. “The person who checks the accounts at the end of the year” works while “auditor” is missing.
- Use a broader word, such as “the form” or “the delivery problem”, and sharpen it later.
- Say “what’s the word... anyway” and carry on. The other person may supply it.
Stuck: “We should ask the, um, the... sorry, it’s on the tip of my tongue...”
Moving: “We should ask the person who signs off the accounts, the auditor, that’s it, before we change anything.”
Afterwards: look it up and say it
In a 2008 study, Amy Beth Warriner and Karin Humphreys gave students definitions to name. When a student got stuck, they were told the word after either 10 or 30 seconds. Two days later, the words they had struggled with for 30 seconds were more likely to leave them stuck again. The British Psychological Society’s summary draws three practical points from it:
- Look the word up, or ask someone, as soon as you reasonably can.
- Once you have it, say it to yourself. Silently is fine.
- If you can’t find it, stop searching instead of straining for minutes.
A 2019 study by Oliver and Humphreys also found that these states tend to come back for the same words. Both studies used lab tasks rather than real conversations.
A five-minute practice
Practise the words that actually went missing for you.
- Keep a note on your phone. When a word goes missing and you find it later, add the word and the sentence you were trying to say.
- Next to each word, write a clue in your own words. For “auditor”: “the person who checks a company’s accounts”.
- A day or two later, cover the words, read the clues and say each word as it comes.
- Pick one word from the list and use it on purpose that day.
This trains the step that failed: getting from a meaning to its word. Our guide to remembering new words has a review plan you can use for the same list.
Play: name the word from its clue
Each clue describes a word that often sits on the tip of the tongue. Going from meaning to word is the step that fails in those moments, so here are three options to help.
Name the word
1 / 5The person who checks a company’s accounts at the end of the year is the ____.
Check the answer
Auditor. An actuary works out risks, usually for insurers. A treasurer looks after an organisation’s money day to day.
Her reply could be read two ways. It was ____.
Check the answer
Ambiguous. It means open to more than one meaning. Ambivalent describes a person with mixed feelings, and apathetic means not caring.
A word that reads the same backwards, like “level”, is a ____.
Check the answer
Palindrome. An anagram rearranges the letters of another word, and a homophone sounds like another word, as with “pair” and “pear”.
The small plastic tip on the end of a shoelace is an ____.
Check the answer
Aglet. Few people use it, which is why it goes missing. An eyelet is the hole the lace goes through, and an anklet is jewellery.
Knowing, after the event, what you should have done is ____.
Check the answer
Hindsight. Foresight is seeing what will happen before it does, and insight is a clear understanding of something.
Your score
Where arcoco fits
arcoco is our vocabulary game for iPhone and Android. You choose words that fit sentences and meanings, and the Word Journal brings back words you have met before.
Choosing from options is closer to recognising a word than producing one, so keep the note from the practice above as well. We have not shown that playing reduces tip-of-the-tongue moments, and arcoco is not speech therapy. Read how the games work.