Learn a new word and suddenly you hear it everywhere — that's not coincidence

Once your brain flags a word, name or idea as newly relevant, selective attention makes you notice it far more often, and confirmation bias makes each sighting feel like proof it's suddenly common. The phenomenon got its odd name in 1994, when a reader wrote to a Minnesota newspaper describing how mentioning the militant group Baader-Meinhof once made him spot the name everywhere for days. Linguist Arnold Zwicky later dubbed it the 'frequency illusion.'

— Arnold Zwicky, Frequency illusion — Term coined 2005; phenomenon named 'Baader–Meinhof' in 1994