午后的陽光透過玻璃照到桌上，我和好友相對而坐，悠閑地品著香茶，聊著天。突然，感覺哪里不對。天啊！這樣一模一樣的場景我原來在哪里經歷！這到底是怎么回事？

Déjà vu (literally "already seen") is the experience of feeling sure that one has already witnessed or experienced a current situation, even though the exact circumstances of the previous encounter are uncertain and were perhaps imagined.

Déjà vu（法語，意為“曾經見過”）指一種似曾相識的感覺，具體說來就是某人在經歷某個場景的時候會很感覺之前曾經經歷過完全一樣的場景，但事實上這個所謂以前經歷過的場景或許并不存在，而且可能只存在于想象當中。

The term was coined by a French psychic researcher, émile Boirac (1851–1917) in his book L'Avenir des sciences psychiques ("The Future of Psychic Sciences"), which expanded upon an essay he wrote while he was an undergraduate. The experience of déjà vu is usually accompanied by a compelling sense of familiarity, and also a sense of "eeriness", "strangeness", "weirdness", or what Sigmund Freud calls "the uncanny". The "previous" experience is most frequently attributed to a dream, although in some cases there is a firm sense that the experience has genuinely happened in the past.

這個詞由法國精神研究專家艾米麗?波拉克（1851–1917）在他一本名為《精神科學的未來》的書中首創，這本書是將他本科時的一篇文章擴展后寫成的。這種似曾相識的經歷通常都伴有強烈的熟悉感，同時還會覺得“怪誕”、“陌生”、“異常”，或者像弗洛伊德所說的“詭異”。那些“以前”的經歷多數都來自于夢境，不過有些時候我們都會堅信這個經歷真的發生過。

The most likely explanation of déjà vu is not that it is an act of "precognition" or "prophecy", but rather that it is an anomaly of memory, giving the false impression that an experience is "being recalled".

對于似曾相識比較靠譜的解釋可不是那些所謂的“先知”或“先覺”，而只是記憶反常的結果，導致大腦錯誤地以為某個場景“存在于記憶中”。

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（中國日報網英語點津 Helen）

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