What's the difference between a 'deja vu' & a 'premonition'?

Answer 1

deja vu is the feeling you get that you have experienced something before - after the fact.

ie, i walk through a doorway in a restaurant, that I have never been in before, I see a waiter drop a tray. I THEN get a feeling, that this has happened before and a feel that i KNEW the tray was going to drop... this may have a physiological reason... an event gets accidentally put into 'long term memory' and we feel that it is an old memory.

a premonition is an imaginary feeling that we know about an event which is going to happen in the future.. if it doesn't happen we forget about it, if - by chance - it does happen (or - more usually, something else happens which we can *fit in* with our premonition) we think it's something miraculous

Answer 2

Ooooh! I had a FEELING someone was going to ask that question today! (=premonition)

Hmmm. It feels like I've read this exact question and typed this exact answer right here at this desk before (=de ja vu) **

So, a premonition happens BEFORE an event, de ja vu comes during or after.


**by the way, I am rather certain I have NOT done so. De ja vu is not about recalling something that actually happened, but feeling as IF it happened.

Also, it IS possible for both things to happen about the same event -- you have a distinct premonition of an event, and then, when it actually happens you get that feeling of de ja vu (perhaps recalling your specific premonition).

And note that "premonition" can often be just a vague feeling and tends especially to be used for a feeling that something BAD is about to happen ("foreboding")., which is in line with the origin of the word -- literally meaning "fore-WARNING*" [cf. the word "admonish"/"admonition" = counsel, advise, warn]) De ja vu, on the other hand, does not suggest that the event is negative.

Answer 3

Deja vu - already seen .... the feeling that a situation or just some minor detail within that situation precisely matches something that you have experienced before.

Premonition - Forewarning of a future event

One is looking back to a situation that had previously happened, the other is looking towards a future event that will/may happen.

Answer 4

Deja vu is the eerie feeling that you'd been somewhere or experienced something before when you know you haven't. A premonition is a feeling that you know what will happen in the future.

Answer 5

Deja Vu is quite literally "previously seen" as in -"I've been here before"-"This has happened to me before" whereas a premonition is a vision of, or feeling about, something yet to happen.

Answer 6

Deja vu is when you think you have done something before, premonition is seeing into the future

Answer 7

Premonition is Latin, Premo.. before. nit-ion... something.

Dejavu is a french word meaning, recurrence or familiarity.

Dejavu happens when you see hear or smell something and the path between you optical nerve and brain alters slightly, it takes a longer path than the other eye and the brain registers this as a memory, giving you the impression that you remember the place even though you never saw it before.

A premonition is when you have a thought about an event in the future about a certain thing or place. It doesn't actually have to come true.

Answer 8

"Deja Vu" is a sense of having been somewhere before even if you are convinced that you never have. A premonition is some kind of inexplicable precognition of a future event, often in a dream

Answer 9

"deja vu" is the feeling that you've been to a place or in a situation previously, "premonition" is simply the sense that something is going to happen before it actually does.

Answer 10

deja vu------you believe you have seen or been there before Premonition----------you receive in your mind a belief that something is going to happen-----one is in the future ,the other in the past