face blindness

noun

variants or less commonly facial blindness

medical

: a form of visual agnosia characterized by an inability to recognize faces : prosopagnosia

… my face blindness is pretty mild. I recognize most of my family members, but when I attend my wife's family functions, I am often lost.

—The Buffalo (New York) News

People with face blindness see individual features, such as the eyes, nose and mouth, but lack the ability to integrate them into a coherent, recognisable face.

—Rebecca Ley

Some people are born with face blindness … while others lose the ability to identify faces from brain damage, typically caused by a stroke or brain injury.

—Karen Weintraub

… the award-winning actor says in a new interview with GQ that he suffers from facial blindness, also known as prosopagnosia, causing him to struggle to remember people's faces.

—Chloe Melas

Word History

First Known Use

1997, in the meaning defined above