Epiphany Reversed

I have read about and discussed the relationship between a word, it's meaning, and the learner of the word, where the three components relate in such a manner termed (by Walker Percy, that is) as the "Delta Phenomenon".  Now I made a connection between this, or rather the reverse of this, with saying a word so many times that it doesn't sound real anymore during one of the class discussions in an epiphany of fascination: see, in learning a word there is a change that occurs within the "mind" so as to allow association between a word (e.g., the sound of the word "ship") and a thing (e.g., a physical ship) so that hearing/reading/feeling the word is no longer a mere sound/combination of letters/gesture, but becomes a pointing arrow; a symbol bearing meaning.  However, when one repeats a word ad nauseum, what can occur is what I might refer to as a "Reverse Delta Phenomenon," wherein the speaker actually experiences an reverse epiphany. What I mean by this is that in repeating a word over and over, one becomes over stimulated, and the imagery of a word such as “blue” disappears as the neurons normally firing in response to the sound begin to decrease in activity, despite the repentance of the word (all theory I came up with just now, but as supplemental explanation, and not the actually basis of the phenomenon.) In this, the sound of the word is heard independently of the mental simulation of the thing to which the word refers, and thus in a way the meaning, or our reality of the word slips away momentarily as one in a sense “unlearns” the word. These orphan words fascinate me; detached from their meanings, they float as mere sound in the air as we hear them anew, just as before we learned they even had parents. I love twisting reality, and for me this is tantamount to bending the proverbial spoon in the matrix.