dejavu

DejaVu commonly refers to the psychological phenomenon déjà vu, a French expression meaning "already seen." It describes a subjective sense that a current situation has been experienced before, often accompanied by a strong feeling of familiarity without recall of a specific prior event. Déjà vu occurs in a wide range of individuals and is typically brief. In research, several theories have been proposed to explain it, including mismatches between perceptual input and memory retrieval, dual processing in recognition, and temporal lobe activity. While usually benign, frequent or intense episodes can be associated with neurological conditions such as epilepsy or migraine, though such associations are not the norm.

The term also names a free and open-source font family derived from the Bitstream Vera project. The DejaVu fonts were created to extend character coverage across many languages while preserving the Vera design. The family includes DejaVu Sans, DejaVu Serif, and DejaVu Sans Mono, along with bold and italic variants. They are widely used in Linux distributions and cross-platform software because of their broad glyph set, clear legibility, and stable metrics. DejaVu fonts are distributed under open licenses that allow free use and redistribution. The project emphasizes compatibility with Unicode and provides extensive documentation for developers and designers.

In addition to these technical senses, "DejaVu" can appear in branding and cultural contexts as a stylized form of the word déjà vu, reflecting the concept in media and typography. The term is sometimes seen in product names, artistic works, or online discourse, but the two main notable senses remain the psychological phenomenon and the font family.