A name on the tip of your tongue: is the memory gone?

Pulling a word out of your head is thought to take two steps. First you find the meaning, like "that person from that movie," and then you find the sound attached to that meaning and send it to your mouth. A tip-of-the-tongue state is when the first step is done but the second one gets stuck.

In 1966, American psychologists Brown and McNeill read definitions of words to people and asked anyone who felt the answer was on the tip of their tongue to write down whatever came to mind. Even without recalling the word, they guessed its first letter and number of syllables at a fairly high rate, and sometimes came up with a wrong word that sounded similar. It means pieces of the sound information are still there.

When this happens, it's easy to worry that your memory is slipping. But young people have it often too. In 1991, Burke's team had young and older adults keep a diary for four weeks. Both groups had it several times, and it became a little more frequent with age. It happened most with proper nouns, such as people's names.

One explanation for why proper nouns get stuck is that there is only one path linking their meaning and sound. You can say "couch" instead of "sofa," but an actor's name has no substitute other than that exact sound. Words you haven't used for a long time also get stuck more easily.

The most common ending is that the word pops up on its own a little later. In the diary study, most cases were eventually resolved, and the word often came suddenly while people were doing something else. Holding on too hard can let a wrong word that keeps circling in your head block the path even more.

So it's reasonable to move on to something else for a moment, or to run through starting sounds one by one in alphabetical order. Once you find the answer, saying the word aloud once or twice may also help. Research suggests tip-of-the-tongue states tend to repeat on the same words, so this is like reinforcing the path that was blocked.