That brief stall of recognition.
That brief stall of recognition — most famously, the fluster of going to introduce someone and finding their name has slipped your mind for a second.
Names the recognition-lag itself, not the social emotion — though in popular use it's tied to the mild embarrassment of the name-blank. Distinct from broad awkwardness: tartle is the specific micro-moment of mental stalling while you try to retrieve a name or place a face.
No transparent literal gloss; the core sense is “to hesitate, boggle, or waver in recognition.”
Origin doubtful; the Scottish National Dictionary suggests possible metathesis from Old English tealtrian “to totter, waver, be uncertain,” while noting “the historical evidence is wanting.”
Genuinely attested in Scots from 1681 (in the “recognize after uncertainty” sense), with quotations through the 18th–20th centuries (e.g. “A toom purse makes a tartling merchant,” 1736). The word is marked obsolete/dialectal in the dictionary.
Unlike Gluckschmerz, tartle is genuinely attested in authoritative Scots lexicography — but the specific listicle definition (“the hesitation when you forget someone's name as you introduce them”) is a modern, romanticized narrowing of the broader attested sense “to hesitate in recognizing a person or thing” (which could even mean to recognize after uncertainty). Etymology uncertain.