déjà vu

noun

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dé·jà vu | \ ˌdā-ˌzhä-ˈvü

, -ˈvᵫ

Definition of déjà vu

1a : the illusion of remembering scenes and events when experienced for the first time

b : a feeling that one has seen or heard something before Despite a blond, swept-back mane all his own, Fonda looks startlingly like his father, Henry … . He even moves like his father, only dispelling the eerie feeling of déjà vu when he opens his mouth.— Peter Biskind

2 : something overly or unpleasantly familiar The team's poor start to the season was déjà vu for its long-suffering fans.

Examples of déjà vu in a Sentence

I entered the room and immediately felt a sense of déjà vu. When the car broke down again, it was déjà vu. The rise in housing costs is déjà vu all over again.

Recent Examples on the Web For me this is deja vu all over again (to quote Yankee great Yogi Berra), having spent the early part of the 2000s mixing projects in 5.1 surround sound, immersive’s technology predecessor. — Bobby Owsinski, Forbes, "Will Immersive Audio Need Neural Link Technology To Finally Break Through?," 18 Apr. 2021 Meanwhile, Michigan is experiencing dreadful deja vu as some hospital intensive care units near capacity. — Nikki Battiste, CBS News, "Georgia becomes third state to shut down Johnson & Johnson vaccine site after adverse reactions," 10 Apr. 2021 There’s a sense of pandemic deja vu in India as states start imposing curfews to stop the spread of coronavirus. — Manavi Kapur, Quartz, "Are India’s night curfews any good at curbing Covid-19 infections?," 6 Apr. 2021 Thanks to a season-to-season roller-coaster ride for much of the last two decades, there’s a sense of deja vu to their most recent plight that gives the Red Sox more faith than fans like Starr that better days lie ahead. — BostonGlobe.com, "The Red Sox believe better days are ahead. But how much longer will fans ride the roller-coaster of highs and lows?," 27 Mar. 2021 Food writers and journalists like myself have written a lot about how restaurants and workers have been faced with impossible choices during this pandemic, and this cycle of closures and reopenings is giving us deja vu, too. — Soleil Ho, San Francisco Chronicle, "Some cautious optimism amid indoor dining's return in the Bay Area," 1 Mar. 2021 In the Italian region of Lombardy, where the coronavirus made its dramatic debut in the Western world a year ago, Dr. Giacomo Grasselli is experiencing a horrible feeling of deja vu. — Tom Kington, Los Angeles Times, "A year after COVID-19 slammed Italy, a third wave is making it deja vu all over again," 19 Mar. 2021 Kennedy, who raised similar concerns about Spartz’s connections last year, said this year feels like deja vu. — Sarah Bowman, The Indianapolis Star, "Authors of bill to eliminate Indiana's wetlands protections have ties to building industry," 8 Feb. 2021 On the Biden side, the creeping sense of deja vu has become a dominant feeling. — Michael Scherer And Scott Clement Washington Post, Star Tribune, "For Democrats, Biden's lead fuels uncomfortable sense of deja vu," 18 Oct. 2020

These example sentences are selected automatically from various online news sources to reflect current usage of the word 'déjà vu.' Views expressed in the examples do not represent the opinion of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback.