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Memory – Podictionary Word of the Day

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Here’s a quote from Cyril Connolly:

“Our memories are card-indexes consulted, and then put back in disorder by authorities whom we do not control.”

That describes my memory pretty accurately. Memory is one of those words that go a long way back.  Spanish, Portuguese, Italian all have it, and of course French where we got it from.

Earlier forms appeared in Latin and Greek and it’s there in Indo-European too, although it seemed to start with an “s” back then.

Here is a word that shows us that lexicographical research is still alive and well.  The word memory is dated as appearing first in English in 1303 according to the Oxford English Dictionary second edition.

But the third edition changes the date of first usage to 1225.

Before, the word’s first usage is credited to a work called Handling Sin by Robert Manning.

From the third edition it is evident that careful scrutiny of the Ancrene Riwle has located the word memory in a marginal note on an old manuscript.

These memory-lindesfarnetwo citations also underline the fact that so much of old documentation on the roots of English is religiously based. Handling Sin has a self explanatory title and the Ancrene Riwle I’ve mentioned before as a sort of etiquette guide for nuns.

This religous base is due to three factors.

First, people were more religious back then.

Second, people were more illiterate back then and so if you could write at all it’s likely you were educated in association with church scholarship.

And finally churches were safer places for old documents to lie dormant for centuries.

I opened with a quote from Cyril Connolly.  He was a writer and magazine editor from the last century. Here’s in part, what Wikipedia has to say about him:

In 1930, he married the American Jean Bakewell who “was to prove one of the more liberating forces in his life… an uncomplicated hedonist, independent, adventurous, celebrating the moment…an attractive personality: warm, generous, witty and approachable …” She provided modest financial support that enabled him to enjoy travels, particularly around the Mediterranean, hospitality and good food and drink. While tolerant of Connolly’s affairs for many years, to his great grief she eventually left him in 1935.

Now it seems to me that if Connolly’s memory was better of which side his bread was buttered on, he’d not have lost a gal who sounds to me like quite a catch.


Five days a week Charles Hodgson produces Podictionary – the podcast for word lovers, Thursday episodes here at OUPblog. He’s also the author of Carnal Knowledge – A Navel Gazer’s Dictionary of Anatomy, Etymology, and Trivia as well as the audio book Global Wording – The Fascinating Story of the Evolution of English.

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