déjà vu

American  

[day-zhah voo, vyoo, day-zha vy] / ˌdeɪ ʒɑ ˈvu, ˈvju, deɪ ʒa ˈvü /

Or deja vu

noun

1. Psychology. the illusion of having previously experienced something actually being encountered for the first time.

2. disagreeable familiarity or sameness.

   The new television season had a sense of déjà vu about it—the same old plots and characters with new names.

3. the sense or feeling of having previously experienced something that really has been encountered before.

   It was déjà vu at the bobsled track today as the U.S. team again claimed the top podium positions.

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déjà vu British  

/ ˈdeɪʒæ ˈvuː, deʒa vy /

noun

1. the experience of perceiving a new situation as if it had occurred before. It is sometimes associated with exhaustion or certain types of mental disorder

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déjà vu Cultural  

1. The strange sensation that something one is now experiencing has happened before: “I knew I had never been in the house before, but as I walked up the staircase, I got a weird sense of déjà vu.” From French, meaning “already seen.”

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Spelling

See resume ².

Etymology

Origin of déjà vu

First recorded in 1900–05; from French: literally, “already seen”

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Example Sentences

See Examples For:

déjà vu

The Guardian's Peter Bradshaw declared, external that Zendaya "saves this film" from "silliness and the generic déjà vu overfamiliarity that is always threatening to sink it".

From BBC ● Aug. 1, 2026

The fact that the outbreak was on a cruise ship, one of the first places COVID-19 started to spread back in early 2020, is giving tons of people déjà vu.

From Salon ● May 11, 2026

If that feels like déjà vu, you aren’t imagining it.

From Barron's ● Jan. 16, 2026

For many here, an overwhelming sense of déjà vu took hold as media and law enforcement again flooded the city.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Jan. 9, 2026

Reading the paper, he must have felt that inescapable chill of déjà vu running through his spine: the “certain Mendel” had certainly preempted de Vries by more than three decades.

From "The Gene" by Siddhartha Mukherjee

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