Textlexia

‘Old people’, as anyone under 30 calls anyone over 40, apparently suffer from textlexia. The word may be more painful than the condition. The wrong element in dyslexia has been taken to mean something like ‘inability’, and this, Greek in form, has been jammed on to text, which derives from Latin.

Let us not be too pious. This is one end of a chain of blunders. The online Urban Dictionary gives an amusing exemplification of textlexia, as from a girl texting her boyfriend: ‘I so sorry 2 txt dump U but if I call U i will cry and start cutting myself again :)’ A little later she sends a correction: ‘I mean 🙁 not :). Stupid textlexia.’

As for dyslexia, we are used to that word, but by rights it ought to mean ‘difficulty with speaking’, for lexis in Greek means ‘speech’, not ‘reading’. Someone seems to have confused it with the Latin legere, which gives us lecture and the less common lection. The blame probably goes back to Moritz Benedikt (1835–1920). Benedikt did not invent eggs Benedict, but he did invent the word darsonvalisation, in honour of Jacques-Arsène d’Arsonval (1851–1940). In local darsonvalisation a current from a high-frequency pulse generator enters the patient through electrodes inserted into the rectum. It was said to be effective against neuralgia, myalgia, headaches, itching and frostbite. My husband denies ever using it. The word never caught on in English. Benedikt also made extensive studies into the criminal brain, to be identified by its shape. But we are interested in his coinage Alexie in 1865. By this he meant ‘loss of the ability to understand written language’. By 1875 it was being used in English in the form alexia.