Well, let's break it down: proposagnosia

Fortunately I have taken no Latin to slow me down.

pro = professional, in favor of
pos = pose, may be combined with first syll. for propose
agno = strikingly similar to Agamemnon, leader of the Greeks in the Trojan war
sia = sounds like "see ya" but only one letter away from Asia

Therefore, proposagnosia means unable to sit still in front of a monarch and instead leaving the room. Or leaving Asia.

Either that or an inability to age.

Write research proposals?
Predict the future?

Come out in favor of posagnosia?

James, you are setting a new standard for crackpot etymologists everywhere.

I'll provide a hint in a couple of hours if necessary.

looks to me like a condition that could lead to bigamy, which is a crime in 49 of our 50 united states. proposagnosiacs tend to enter into oral contracts to become wed (that is, engagements; i.e., they propose) and then immediately forget about them (rather like an amnesiac would). sometimes even the fulfillment of these proposals gets carried out and then forgotten... multiple times. hence, bigamy.

other guesses: proposagnosiacs are unable to

1. stop obsessing over the whiskey rebellion;
2. deliver the prizes promised when administering online quiz games.

from the Nouveau French, "prop" = meaning "dirty, dirty, dirty"

and the greek, agnostic = meaning "i don't know nothing about no _____"

and the English "proposal"

Altogether this means "I have no idea about your filthy proposal." Which is what hard-thinking Dr.s of Social Psychology might hear on a bad day, no?

I thought I nailed it.

inability to believe in religion
inability to leave your property
inability to show sound judgement

Smell?

Oh, hang on, that's anosmia.

Refrain from entering comments-based competitions?

Inability to smell is 'Anosmia', which figures into Martin Amis's "The Information" -- the guys in the pub at the paranoid main character's health club call said PMC 'Anosmia,' which the PMC takes to mean that he's unaware that he walks around all day smelling like poop, when, in fact, the guys in the PATPMCHC just remember that the PMC defined anosmia correctly on the pub quiz machine.

I'll guess 'travel in propeller-propelled aircraft.' That just has to be it.

In case I'm wrong about the airplane, I'll make a more sincere, but likely no less accurate guess that the answer is "make up one's mind." Yes, absolutely.

the inability to dance?

Now we know why Sally can't dance no more, clinically speaking.

The condition of being pissed-off at the mistress or master who was supposed to make sure that the diva had the goddam squirrel IN HER HAT for the big balloon dropping number. Dammit.

Ardilla ausente [singing]

Inability to ask questions?

the inability to suppress a pureile grin and act properly concerned when someone mentions suffering from angina (due to the absurd similarity shared by the name of that serious ailment and an aspect of the female anatomy).

Not just acute angina, but major, major tourette's, too.

All right, a bit of a hint: it's a not-uncommon symptom of autism. Lesions in certain parts of the brain have been known to cause proposagnosia.

Inability to speak?

the inability to live any semblance of a dignified life because it's so vitally important that hollywood actors win academy awards with mawkish portrayals of the developmentally disabled that lead inevitably not towards greater understanding in the community at large but to ever more mockery: 'check this out: he's just like rain man...', etc.

One is unable to form original sentences?

The excesses of Sean Penn, Dustin Hoffman, and their colleagues aside I'm not sure the mentally disabled were treated with perfect dignity in the pre-Rain Man era, either, but maybe I'm just not remembering correctly.

By the way, you're all still wrong. I'll give you one more hint -- it is not verbal. One can speak and understand English perfectly and still suffer from this disorder. It has nothing to do with writing, either.

proposagnosia: the inability to design, build, or arrange props for any members of the Screen Actor's Guild?

inability to sneeze in the company of others while eating, especially in diners featuring three letters of a first name and a possessive apostrophe-s, followed by the word "Diner"

The inability to separate signal from noise? Or signal from other irrelevant signal?

Many of us already know that agnosia describes an inability to recognize objects (we ran across the word while looking up 'agnostic' during our pre-pubescent brain-stuffing-for-the-hell-of-it period).

So, propos is the tough part...gotta come up with something that, together with agnosia forms a word useful enough to describe a debilitating condition...

Proprium?

Proprium (property?) is that which permits individuation - the ability to discern specific characteristics which deviate from, yet still fit within, a generic template. So maybe proposagnosia describes an inability to recognize differences between individual members of a genus, even though the ability to recognize the genus itself remains intact.

Whether the genus is potatoes or people is unclear to me. I'd guess people (anthropocentricity).

But I can't say whether it means the difference between self and others, or others and others, or both. Proprium itself has a certain 'selfhood' connotation...at least I think it does...so I'd guess maybe proposagnosia describes an inability to differentiate self from others, but whether the word limits itself to visual comparisons of physical characteristics, or somehow extends itself to include auditory, even metaphysical comparisons, I can't say.

This is getting hard. Fun schmun. Proposadnauseum. I'm gonna Google it. Right now.

Opus Dark is right about agnosia -- what it is that people with this disability can't recognize is the issue. Differentiation of self from others, however, is a whole other kettle of neuropsychological fish.

Since I haven't googled, it falls on me to keep guessing, I suppose:

They can't recognize propeller planes?
They can't recognize the relative size of things?
They can't recognize good manners?

I just *know* that Oliver Sacks has written about this. Can't recognize one's wife? Or hat?

Rory is in something which may or may not be the ballpark.

Is it - you can't recognise people? (You would never have the "looks familiar; can't remember the name" problem).

The inability to differentiate sentient, living beings from inert, vegetable or fecal matter, dead things and carcasses, etc via sense of smell. ?

So in the picture, is Dr. StukeAss thinking very hard about what proposagnosia might be? Or more foreboddingly still, is the nut who proposed this quiz? 'Cause if he did...

Oh, hell. Bit of a spelling error. See above, please. The lesson here is that you can use sources on the Web to check your spelling when you can't find the original print reference...but they may contain the same mistake you're making.

For the reference, the hard-thinking Dr. Stukas has nothing to do with this question. The offering of his thoughtful visage as reward is just more of our typical whimsy. Blame not the Stuke.

I have returned from my slumber (see Awakenings) but I also don't have the answer tingling in my axons or dendrites (or the synapse between, more likely). At any rate, thanks for making my ears burn.

**trumpets**

He Rises!