Does this happen to anyone else?

[Blitz]

It always seems that whenever I encounter a new word, I suddenly see it pop up a few more times that day or throughout the following few days.

Like today, I was playing a flash game online, and something about "cauterizing the stumps that used to be my hands" came up (don't ask). I didn't know what cauterizing was (call me uneducated), but it sure as hell sounded painful. Not an hour later, I was playing a rather infuriating quiz app. One of the questions inquired something about in which country was cauterizing wounds popular, or something like that. (I dictionary.com'ed what it means and I cringed.)

I know that's only two occurrences, but it's the most recent example. I'm wracking my brain for another word this happened with, but I'm coming up blank, although I'm pretty sure something similar happened with the word "castrate" (with a similar cringing reaction).

...Has anyone else experienced something like this or am I just overly analytical?

EDIT: Oh, I used a lot of parentheses. I promise I'm not a parentheses whore.

[mdk]

Happens to me all the time. I mean, not that I necessarily hear NEW words that often, but obscure or oddly specific words. Names, too. Like if I think to myself, 'Who's the guy that wrote the 3:10 to Yuma soundtrack.... oh yeah, Marco Beltrami.' Within a day or two (it seems like without fail) I'll stumble across a movie or show where he did the soundtrack. Sometimes I think it's subtle mind-control by the lizard people who run our zeitgeist.... but honestly it's just an affirmation bias that happens naturally in your head. Like how it seems like a lot of street lamps turn off as you're watching. They turn off all the time, but you only notice when you're watching. Same principle -- you hear new words all the time, but when you hear it twice it seems to be happening much more than it is.

[Blitz]

That... actually makes a lot of sense.
Although I'm pretty sure the subtle mind-control is a much more plausible explanation.

[Cpt Toellner]

That name....

[Brovo]

Yep. Confirmation bias. MDK nailed it. Plus we have a habit of finding patterns where none exist. (Ex: seeing faces or humanoid shapes in darkness or in every day objects.) When you learn about a new thing your brain subconsciously sets out to map out where more of that thing is.

Like my new word of the day: Ferreting.

[Foster]

Foist.

And now an author to follow: Edwin P. Hoyt.

[gaudi]

Oh definitely. I'm sure confirmation bias has a lot to do with it. But that's cool, because if you're learning new words, they're probably vibrant and interesting.
Word of the day : the Portuguese (fittingly) 'saudade' : intense nostalgia and a haunting yearning for lost love, especially one that is presumably lost forever.

[Whisket]

I've always wondered about this myself and never really asked anyone. I always refered to it as the "Word of the day."

[ButtsnBalls]

Cpt Toellner said
That name....

.....

[Grizzle Bear]

I'm sure that I've heard a name for that before, where you notice things all at once after learning or seeing something new. For the life of me though I can't remember what it was. The other day I stopped in a comics shop and picked up a few trades. I started reading Alan Moore's run on Swamp Thing from mid-eighties (which by the way is absolutely incredible) and noticed the first name of the colorist on most of the issues was Tatjana. It stood out to me, I'd never seen that name spelled that way. Couple of days later I crack open Came the Dawn, a collection of stories published by EC comics in the fifties all illustrated by Wallace Wood, that I had just happened to buy that same day. Start reading the brief biography of Wood in the beginning of the book and it turns out his wife was named Tatjana. Seemed weird to me.

[Lucian]

This happened to me recently with the phrase in medias res. It really is quite an odd occurrence.