Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • noun The mental faculty of retaining and recalling past experience.
  • noun The act or an instance of remembering; recollection.
  • noun All that a person can remember.
  • noun Something that is remembered.
  • noun The fact of being remembered; remembrance.
  • noun The period of time covered by the remembrance or recollection of a person or group of persons.
  • noun A unit of a computer that preserves data for retrieval.
  • noun Capacity for storing information.
  • noun Statistics The set of past events affecting a given event in a stochastic process.
  • noun The capacity of a material, such as plastic or metal, to return to a previous shape after deformation.
  • noun Immunology The ability of the immune system to respond faster and more powerfully to subsequent exposure to an antigen.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun Memory as mediated by kinesthetic images in the narrower sense.
  • noun The mental capacity of retaining unconscious traces of conscious impressions or states, and of recalling these traces to consciousness with the attendant perception that they (or their objects) have a certain relation to the past; in a narrower sense, the power of such retention alone, the power or act of recalling being termed recollection.
  • noun The fact of retaining such mental impressions; remembrance; mental hold on the past; retrospect; recollection.
  • noun Length of time included in the conscious experience or observation of an individual, a community, or any succession of persons; the period of time during which the acquisition of knowledge is possible.
  • noun The state of being remembered; continued presence in the minds or thoughts of men; retained or perpetuated knowledge; posterior note or reputation: as, to celebrate the memory of a great event.
  • noun That which is remembered; anything fixed in or recalled to the mind; a mental impression; a reminiscence: as, pleasant memories of travel.
  • noun That which brings to mind; a memento or memorial; a remembrancer.
  • noun Commemoration; perpetuation of the knowledge of anything; a recalling to mind: as, a monument erected in memory of a person.
  • noun An act or ceremony of remembrance; a service for the dead: same as commemoration, 2 .
  • noun = Syn. 1-4. Memory, Recollection, Remembrance, Reminiscence. Memory is the general word for the faculty or capacity itself; recollection and remembrance are different kinds of exercise of the faculty; reminiscence, also, is used for the exercise of the faculty, but less commonly, and then it stands for the least energetic use of it, the matter seeming rather to be suggested to the mind. The correctness of the use of memory for that which is remembered has been disputed. The others are freely used for that which is remembered. In either sense, recollection implies more effort, more detail, and more union of objects in wholes, than remembrance. Reminiscence is used chiefly of past events, rarely of thoughts, words, or scenes, while recollection is peculiarly appropriate for the act of recalling mental operations. See remember.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • noun The faculty of the mind by which it retains the knowledge of previous thoughts, impressions, or events.
  • noun The reach and positiveness with which a person can remember; the strength and trustworthiness of one's power to reach and represent or to recall the past.
  • noun The actual and distinct retention and recognition of past ideas in the mind; remembrance
  • noun The time within which past events can be or are remembered.
  • noun Something, or an aggregate of things, remembered; hence, character, conduct, etc., as preserved in remembrance, history, or tradition; posthumous fame.
  • noun obsolete A memorial.
  • noun [Obs.] to put on record; to record.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • noun uncountable The ability of an organism to record information about things or events with the facility of recalling them later at will.
  • noun A record of a thing or an event stored and available for later use by the organism.
  • noun computing The part of a computer that stores variable executable code or data (RAM) or unalterable executable code or default data (ROM).
  • noun The time within which past events can be or are remembered.

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • noun an electronic memory device
  • noun something that is remembered
  • noun the cognitive processes whereby past experience is remembered
  • noun the area of cognitive psychology that studies memory processes
  • noun the power of retaining and recalling past experience

Etymologies

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

[Middle English memorie, from Anglo-French, from Latin memoria, from memor, mindful; see (s)mer- in Indo-European roots.]

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

From Anglo-Norman memorie, Old French memoire etc., from Latin memoria ("the faculty of remembering, remembrance, memory, a historical account"), from memor ("mindful, remembering"), related to Ancient Greek μνήμη (mneme, "memory") μέρμερος (mermeros, "anxious"), μέριμνα (merimna, "care, thought").

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Examples

  • What's surprising about this analysis is that it suggests that built in to common sense concepts of memory is a reliance on the existence of some kind of ˜memory trace™ as a continuous bridge across the temporal gap, causally connecting past and present.

    Memory Sutton, John 2004

  • -- And not only must memory, if it is to be a good memory, omit the generally worthless, or trivial, or irrelevant, and supply the generally useful, significant, and relevant, but it must in some degree be a _specialized memory_.

    The Mind and Its Education George Herbert Betts 1901

  • We new-born infants, without experience, were born with fear, with memory of fear; and _memory is experience_.

    The Jacket (Star-Rover) Jack London 1896

  • Intel® GS45 Express Chipset with integrated 3D graphics, featuring Intel® Graphics Media Accelerator 4500MHD (Intel® GMA 4500MHD) with up to 1759 MB of Intel® Dynamic Video Memory Technology 5.0 (64 MB of dedicated video memory, up to 1695 MB of shared system memory*), supporting Microsoft® DirectX® 10

    www.hardwarezone.com.sg Eleg 2010

  • Indeed in one of the very passages I have quoted in order to show that Mr. Romanes accepts the phenomena of heredity as phenomena of memory, he speaks of "heredity as playing an important part _in forming memory_ of ancestral experiences;" so that whereas I want him to say that the phenomena of heredity are due to memory, he will have it that the memory is due to the heredity, {236a} which seems to me absurd.

    Selections from Previous Works and Remarks on Romanes' Mental Evolution in Animals Samuel Butler 1868

  • These are not mechanisms of memory in any cognitive sense; the term memory here is used as a metaphor, implying only that the past history has a discernible influence on the present properties, but homeopaths believe that, through these or other mechanisms, water can form and retain some useable "memory" of the original medicinal substance

    Citizendium, the Citizens' Compendium - Recent changes [en] 2009

  • These are not mechanisms of memory in any cognitive sense; the term memory here is used as a metaphor, implying only that the past history has a discernible influence on the present properties, but homeopaths believe that, through these or other mechanisms, water can form and retain some useable "memory" of the original medicinal substance

    Citizendium, the Citizens' Compendium - Recent changes [en] 2009

  • These are not mechanisms of memory in any cognitive sense; the term memory here is used as a metaphor, implying only that the past history has a discernible influence on the present properties, but homeopaths believe that, through these or other mechanisms, water can form and retain some useable "memory" of the original medicinal substance

    Citizendium, the Citizens' Compendium - Recent changes [en] 2009

  • These are not mechanisms of memory in any cognitive sense; the term memory here is used as a metaphor, implying only that the past history has a discernible influence on the present properties, but homeopaths believe that, through these or other mechanisms, water can form and retain some useable "memory" of the original medicinal substance

    Citizendium, the Citizens' Compendium - Recent changes [en] 2009

  • These are not mechanisms of memory in any cognitive sense; the term memory here is used as a metaphor, implying only that the past history has a discernible influence on the present properties, but homeopaths believe that, through these or other mechanisms, water can form and retain some useable "memory" of the original medicinal substance

    Citizendium, the Citizens' Compendium - Recent changes [en] 2009

Comments

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  • Memory is not an accounting, but an argument.

    --Jan Cox

    May 22, 2007

  • "The true art of memory is the art of attention." - Samuel Johnson

    June 5, 2008

  • "'I'm missing you, too,' I told him, 'but where are you?'

    'I'm not exactly sure,' he replied with a confused look. 'Strictly speaking I don't think I'm anywhere - just here, alive in your memories.'

    'This is my memory? What's it like?'

    'Well,' replied Landen, 'there are some really outstanding parts but some pretty dreadful ones too - in that respect it's a little like Majorca. Would you care for some tea?'"

    - Jasper Fforde, 'Lost In A Good Book'.

    November 24, 2008

  • "Whenever I think about the past, it just brings back so many memories."

    - Steven Wright.

    April 2, 2009

  • Steven Wright = comedic genius. That's right up there with "A little pain never hurt anyone". ...Can't remember who originally said that.

    April 2, 2009

  • Gedaechtnis, Erinnerung, Andenken

    oder auch ein Stueck im Musical Cats =)

    May 14, 2009

  • the important thing that everyone have

    May 14, 2009

  • *past things or events that we remember.

    May 14, 2009

  • I learn something new every day :)

    May 14, 2009

  • I forget something old every day...

    May 15, 2009

  • Not too sure whether I was supposed to leave a comment here.

    May 15, 2009

  • Don't ask me; I can't remember.

    May 20, 2009

  • See hauled comments.

    March 25, 2012