Lexical-tactile synesthesia involves consistent tactile sensations being perceived in the body, head, hands, etc. when reading, looking at, hearing or thinking about certain words. Rather being just a one-off occurrence, these sensations would be felt on a regular basis, corresponding to the same words each time and not just to reading or speech in general. It is an uncommon type of synesthesia, with few cases reported.
If the touch sensations occur are evoked by individual letters rather than whole words, it would be a case of another rare type of synesthesia called grapheme-tactile synesthesia.
Go to the page on grapheme-tactile synesthesia
However, there are cases described where lexical-tactile and grapheme-tactile synesthesia occur together in the same person, as some of their consistent touch sensations are induced by the letters in a word while others only happen in response to the word as a whole.
Here is a description written by a person with lexical-tactile synesthesia (in addition to grapheme-tactile, so they get tactile perceptions from both whole words and letters):
"Basically different letters and words give different sensations on different parts of my head and back.
It happens for non-English words too, my second language is Chinese, so i feel associated touches and sensations for those too. (…)
I could categorise the main 'touches' that I get from reading as a either a head, back, or spine related touch.
On the head, there's generally 5 sensations that I can sort of categorise them into - tug, weighted, brush past, tilt and buzz.
• tug (small pull, or perhaps none at all, in the sense that it's something loosening)
• weighted (prolonged pull)
• brush past (momentary contact)
• tilt (makes me feel like my head is tilted sideways but it isn't, usually momentary because if it was prolonged i would just count it as dizziness and i've never had consistent experiences of prolonged 'tilt')
• buzz (generally on the top of head)
On the back it's mainly just brushing past on the shoulder blades for certain words and on the spine it's more tingly. I do have two strange words that trigger a pull around the tailbone area - that being naphthalene (that thing in mothballs) and consecutive.
Some scenarios that people might be curious about:
If a word is misspelled I would still feel the same grapheme-tactile/lexical-tactile feeling as it would give if I had read the correctly spelled word. e.g. if 'misspelled' was spelled as 'mispelled' it still gives the sensation of a loose hair pulled out of my hair.
If I imagine the things people are saying as subtitles in my head (I have a decent imagination) and keep up with what they're saying in terms of understanding and also coming up with subtitles at the same time I do feel the grapheme-tactile/lexical-tactile sensations to some extent.
These grapheme-tactile/lexical-tactile experiences also happen if I replay an argument / conversation that happened before in playwriting format in my head - I enjoy reading plays, not so much watching them - so it would go like Person A: blah blah blah and so on, and if I think of heard conversations in playwriting format in my head it would still produce similar grapheme-tactile/lexical-tactile sensations."
(Source: this post and comments on the Synesthesia subReddit. 2020)
Here is someone else who reports lexical-tactile synesthesia. In this case they have both lexical-tactile and auditory-tactile synesthesia, as in addition to touch sensations being produced by words and grammar, they have also described having them in response to sounds, music, timbre and musical genres.
"I can physically feel the textures of sounds. However, the feeling of words is usually arbitrary. For example, the word “sandpaper” feels like sandpaper, and I feel it in the palm of my hand, but “sharp” feels kind of like a guitar sting wrapped around my arm. Also, spoken bad grammar feels like pins and needles."
(Source: this post on the Synesthesia subReddit. 2020)
This next person gives an interesting description of how they perceive sensations mainly in their mouth from different words. They consider it lexical-tactile synesthesia rather than lexical-gustatory, as actual taste sensations are never produced, as would be the case for lexical-gustatory:
"I don’t feel words/sounds/letters on my head or shoulders but in my mouth and throat, but it’s not “taste”, it’s a distinct tactile feeling.
For example, reading or hearing certain words might feel like swishing a bunch of cold marbles in my mouth, or biting down on a piece of tin foil, or like chewing on cotton, or the sensation of thick mud coating my tongue, or percolating bubbles. Tastes are much more rare but occasional. (…)
For me, the most distinct sensations come when I’m reading something like poetry or prose, where the focus is on the words themselves and less the information being conveyed by them. I can kind of ignore it if I’m trying to read a manual or something. Similarly, I have sensations when someone is speaking words, but again, it’s usually in the case of someone reciting something or in a video where there is no expectation for me to verbally respond - my brain focuses on the meaning and context of the words if I’m actually in a conversation. Visually seeing the words written out, as full words versus singular letters, produces the strongest tactile sensation - single letters hardly ever really stand out.
For example, from me going back to reread the paragraph I just typed, I can point out a few words that have specific sensations (as not all do). “Distinct” feels like tapping my front teeth on a granite countertop. “Sensation” is silky like drinking very thick chocolate milk and drawing it through your mouth with some suction. “Prose” is snappy, like the feeling of a long pretzel stick breaking when you go to bite it. “Focus” feels like blowing a stream of air out of pursed lips.
Hearing spoken words generates similar responses."
(Source: this post and these comments on the Synesthesia subReddit. 2023 and 2025)
Go to the page on grapheme-tactile synesthesia
This page first published: 29 June 2025
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