Deja vu is the odd feeling that this has all happened before. A moment of deja vu, a strange deja vu.
It is common, brief and harmless, and it becomes rarer with age rather than commoner. Deja vu is French for already seen, and English kept the accents in print and dropped them everywhere else.
1noundeja vuThe odd feeling that this has all happened before.
“He had a moment of deja vu on the stairs and could not shake it.”
deja vu is a feeling.
French
déjà vu
English, today
deja vu
Borrowed from French déjà vu.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA
Practised in Thinking & Memory