We are certain we know the word we are looking for. The missing term is just within arm’s reach, but for some reason, we find it impossible to recall. We end up feeling frustrated, unsure of our abilities and surprised by how these failures can occur even with the most common words we use. Interestingly, this experience has a scientific term — the tip-of-the-tongue (TOT) phenomenon. As you can guess, it derives from the phrase "it's on the tip of my tongue" and psychologists define it as a feeling that accompanies the momentary inability to retrieve information from memory.

William James was the first psychologist to describe the TOT phenomenon, though he did not label it as such. "The state of our consciousness is peculiar. There is a gap therein; but no mere gap. It is a gap that is intensely active. A sort of wraith of the name is in it, beckoning us in a given direction, making us at moments tingle with the sense of our closeness and then letting us sink back without the longed-for term," he explained in Principles of Psychology in 1890.

To learn more about this experience and how widespread it is, we reached out to John Richard Hanley, emeritus professor of neuropsychology in the Department of Psychology at the University of Essex, who studies the tip-of-the-tongue states. Studies have revealed that everyone experiences the inability to retrieve words and information from their memories, and it occurs frequently in everyday life. "As far as we know, the TOT phenomenon is universal," the professor told Bored Panda. "Most languages contain a specific term for a TOT. Moreover, TOTs have been shown to occur even in speakers of a language that does not have a dedicated expression for TOTs."

This phenomenon might be global, but there seems to be no universally accepted cause for using the wrong words or misspeaking from time to time. However, there are scientific theories that try to explain it. "Some researchers claim that the TOT experience exists in order to tell you that you know the elusive name and that you might be able to retrieve it if you spend more time attempting recall," Hanley said.

"TOT states can occur for common names and for all types of proper names," the professor added. "However, they are particularly frequent for names of people. Long names are more prone to TOTs than short names."

We were curious to learn what happens to people when they experience these cognitive issues. Hanley explained that when in a TOT state, "we can recall detailed biographical information about the person; it is only the name that is elusive." Moreover, "we generally even know whether the elusive name contains 2 words (e.g. Gwyneth Paltrow) or 3 words (e.g. Jamie Lee Curtis)."

It’s hard to deny that experiencing a TOT moment can be extremely annoying. After all, it’s not that you can’t remember the concept of that word but that you can’t find a way to express it. When something does trigger your memory and you finally find the language label you were looking for, you feel a wave of relief sweep over your frustration. "One researcher made the point that a TOT can be as intense as a feeling that you are about to sneeze, so I assume that this is true," the professor said.

Moreover, it seems that this phenomenon becomes more frequent with age. Word-finding problems are nearly a stereotypical element of the cognitive issues that trouble older adults. "We do indeed experience more TOTs in old age, and this is particularly true for the names of familiar people," the professor added. Diary studies have found that TOTs occur about once a week for younger adults and increase to about once a day for older adults. Also, researchers consider that this is caused by older adults showing retrieval failure of known words, and needing more "search" time to find the awol word.

But it turns out that getting some exercise and leading a healthy life could protect us against language decline in old age. Katrien Segaert, lecturer in the School of Psychology at the University of Birmingham found in her latest study that fitter people are less likely to experience TOT moments than those who lack fitness. "We found that the higher the older person’s aerobic fitness level was, the lower their odds of experiencing a tip-of-the-tongue moment," she wrote. "A person’s age and the number of words a person knows also determine the frequency of experiencing tip-of-the-tongue moments. What is important is that the relationship between the frequency of tip-of-the-tongue moments and aerobic fitness levels exists over and above the influence of a person’s age and vocabulary size."