"inability to recognize faces," 1950, Medical Latin from German prosopagnosie (1948), from Greek prosopon "face" (see prosopopeia) + agnosia "ignorance" (see agnostic).
Entries linking to prosopagnosia
prosopopeia n.
also prosopopoeia, 1560s, from Latin prosopopoeia, from Greek prosōpopoiia "the putting of speeches into the mouths of others," from prosōpon "person; face; dramatic character," etymologically "that which is toward the eyes," from pros "to" (see pros-) + ōps "eye, face" (from PIE root *okw- "to see") + poiein "to make, form, do" (see poet). Generally, a rhetorical figure in which an imaginary or absent person, or abstraction or inanimate character, is made to speak or act. Sometimes Englished as prosopopy (1570s).
agnostic n.
1870, "one who professes that the existence of a First Cause and the essential nature of things are not and cannot be known" [Klein]; coined by T.H. Huxley, supposedly in September 1869, from Greek agnostos "unknown, unknowable," from a- "not" (see a- (3)) + gnōstos "(to be) known" (from PIE root *gno- "to know"). The coinage is sometimes said to be a reference to Paul's mention of the altar to "the Unknown God" in Acts, but according to Huxley it was a reference to the early Church movement known as Gnosticism (see Gnostic). The adjective also is from 1870.
I ... invented what I conceived to be the appropriate title of 'agnostic,' ... antithetic to the 'Gnostic' of Church history who professed to know so much about the very things of which I was ignorant. [T.H. Huxley, "Science and Christian Tradition," 1889]
The agnostic does not simply say, "I do not know." He goes another step, and he says, with great emphasis, that you do not know. [Robert G. Ingersoll, "Reply to Dr. Lyman Abbott," 1890]