- 1
Synaesthesia is when one sense sets off another sense at the same time. A person with synaesthesia may see a colour every time they hear a note of music, or taste something when they read a name. It is not imagination and it is not a person choosing to think that way — it happens on its own, every time, and it is usually the same pairing for that person all their life. The number 7 might always be green to one person, and always be red to another; both are sure, and neither is wrong, because it is their own brain doing it. Doctors and scientists call it a 'condition', but most people who have it do not feel sick and do not want a cure — many of them like it, and some artists and musicians say it helps their work. In fact many people who have it do not find out until they are grown up, because they thought everybody's brain worked that way. British writing uses 'synaesthesia'; American writing usually spells it 'synesthesia', and both are the same word. There is also a second, softer use in talking about writing and poetry: when a writer describes one sense with words that belong to another — 'a loud shirt', 'a warm voice', 'sweet music' — teachers call that synaesthesia too. That one is a style choice, not a brain condition, so be careful which one someone means.
聯覺（醫學上也說「共感覺」）；文學修辭上則叫「通感」。注意這兩個中文說法對應同一個英文字：講大腦的狀況用「聯覺」，講「響亮的顏色」這種寫作手法用「通感」。
組成syn- 'together, with' + -aesthesia 'sensing, feeling' (from Greek aisthesis, 'sensation') — so 'senses joined together'. It was built on purpose to look like the older word anaesthesia, which is an- 'not' + the same -aesthesia: 'no feeling'.
同家族的字
- anaesthesiasame -aesthesia 'feeling'; an- means 'not', so 'no feeling' — the word synaesthesia was modelled on it
- aestheticfrom the same Greek aisthesis 'sensation, perception'
- synonymsame syn- 'together'
原始詞典資料3 筆記錄
以下是外部詞典記錄的用法，原文照列，我們還沒有寫成教學內容。上面的說明才是我們自己寫的；有些用法可能上面已經講過了。
synaesthesianoun/ˌsɪn.ɪsˈθiː.ʒə/
- 1
human-sciencesmedicineneurologyA neurological or psychological phenomenon whereby a particular sensory stimulus triggers a second kind of sensation.
- M. [Théodore] Flournoy includes all the phenomena of "Colored Hearing" and of "Mental Forms" under the convenient and adequate name Synæsthesia—in place of which, to be sure, he himself usually employs the less defensible term Synopsie. […] The phenomena of synæsthesia are divided into three main groups: "photisms," among which are included, as by [Eugen] Bleuler and Lehmann, all the varieties of pseudo-chromesthesia; "Schemes," comprising not only "forms" (diagrammes) associated with series of words or numbers, but "symbols," or particular figures associated with single letters, numerals, colors and the like; and "personifications," in which the associated factor is no mere color or form, but has become richer and more concrete.
- Probably in all of us, though in some men much more distinctly than in others, there exist certain synæsthesiæ or concomitances of sense-impression, which are at any rate not dependent on any recognisable link of association.
- 2
The association of one sensory perception with, or description of it in terms of, a different perception that is not experienced at the same time.
- On a phonemic level, phenomena of synesthesia have often been described and studied. Practically all children and a good many adults—though for the most part adults will deny it—spontaneously associate sounds, whether phonemes or the timbre of musical instruments, with colors and forms.
- For one of the enigmatic features of synaesthesia is that, within a given cultural group, the kinds of associations made by different subjects occur according to statistically verifiable recurring patterns. As Jakobson explains, ‘when we ask whether /i/ or /u/ is darker, testing such phonic oppositions as grave vs. acute, some of the subjects may respond that this question makes no sense to them, but hardly one will respond that /i/ is the darker of the two’[…].
- 3
artartsliteratureA literary or artistic device whereby one kind of sensation is described in the terms of another.
- Linking moods with colours is one example of synaesthesia. […] As a tool for improving writing, the idea of synaesthesia is versatile and innovative. Why use only visual references to describe visual impressions? Why just describe sounds using sound-related words? Play with cross-matching the senses.
- [I]t may be stated that the concept of synaesthesia is instrumental for understanding music videos, since videos are based on the soundtrack's visual associations. Yet to discuss associations here may cause some problems. […] [Nicholas Cook] seems to be relying on a rather normative conception of synaesthesia, which for its part supports the idea of absolute, nonrepresentational music. The implication of his discussion is that the "true" forms of music–image synaesthesia come only in the forms of perception of color or light when hearing a certain musical sound.
資料來源：英文維基詞典 English Wiktionary（CC BY-SA 4.0）。 原文照列，未經改寫。