<P> Semantic satiation (also semantic saturation) is a psychological phenomenon in which repetition causes a word or phrase to temporarily lose meaning for the listener, who then perceives the speech as repeated meaningless sounds . </P> <P> Leon Jakobovits James coined the phrase "semantic satiation" in his 1962 doctoral dissertation at McGill University . Prior to that, the expression "verbal satiation" had been used along with terms that express the idea of mental fatigue . The dissertation listed many of the names others had used for the phenomenon: </P>

When you repeat a word too many times