Memory, Remembrance

​Memory
 
Do you remember memory work from elementary school? Did you ever have to memorize a poem or a passage of literature? Did you ever have to learn anything ‘by heart’?
 
The word memory has its origins in the PIE root (s)mer-1 (to remember), Greek mermera (to care) and merimna (care), and Latin memoria and memor (mindful). PIE (s)mer-1 is also the source of Sanskrit smarati (he remembers) and the source of the name Mimir, the giant who guards the Well of Wisdom in Norse mythology.
 
The word memory (meaning the recollection of someone or something; remembrance, awareness of consciousness of someone or something) comes to English in the 13th century via Old English mimorian, Middle English memorie, and 11th century Old French memorie (mind, memory, remembrance; memorial, record). The word almost remembers itself over the years!
 
The word memory as the faculty or mental capacity of remembering or retaining unconscious traces of conscious impressions or states, and of recalling these to consciousness in relation to the past, is from the late 14th century.
 
The verb ‘to memorize’ (to commit to writing, to cause to be remembered by writing or inscription) is from the 1590s. Memorize meaning to commit to memory, to learn by heart, to always have in mind, is from 1838.
 
Memory as anything that is fixed in or recalled to the mind is from 1817; however, this sense that memory is ‘fixed’ is called into question by current cognitive science. A neurosurgeon cannot ‘find’ a memory in the brain. Rather, each memory is re-created or constructed as we ‘re-member’.
 
Remember, Remembrance
 
The word remember is from Latin re (back, again) + memorari (to be mindful of) = rememorari (to recall to mind, to remember), from memor (mindful) and from the PIE root (s)mer (to remember).
 
Remembering implies mindfulness and paying attention. We easily remember memories linked to affect and emotion. Remember is a word that combines mindfulness and heartfeltness. In contrast to recall which suggests an effort to bring something back into memory, we easily remember because for some reason we care. We care to remember.
 
One year when I was in elementary school, my class memorized John McRae’s poem In Flanders Fields. Years later I cannot watch a Remembrance Day ceremony or see a poppy on a sombre veteran’s proud chest without echoes of the poem in my mind and heart. I remember my grandfather and the story of his being wounded at Vimy Ridge on 9 April 1917.
 
Reference: Online Etymological Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com/
David’s Wordshop Blog: http://www.davidtickner.ca/blog
Tisdale, S. (2023, November). Mere belief: Sliding down the curve of forgetting. Harper’s Magazine, 347 (2082), 54 – 61.
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