remembrance
English · rɪˈmembrəns
Remembrance is memory with a direction: toward what must not be dropped.
- re-
- again, back
- memor
- mindful (Latin)
Morphology
From Latin rememorari, to call to mind again. English kept a liturgical and civic use that memory, as a faculty, does not always carry. To remember can be private. Remembrance is often shared.
Semantic range
Recollection, commemoration, keeping-in-mind, memorial practice.
History of the word
Church anamnesis, war memorials, the phrase “in remembrance of me”: the word sits between psychology and rite. Cognitive science studies retrieval. Remembrance names why a people retrieve.
A key source
Augustine
Confessiones X, on memoria as a palace.
Associated traditions
Parallels, not equivalents. Different attempts to notice something about knowing.
Greek
anamnēsis
A calling-back; in Plato, a stronger claim.
Hebrew
zakar
To remember as to act; God remembers, and so does Israel.
Arabic
dhikr
Remembrance of God; a practice, not a store.
A distant linguistic echo
sati
Pali · Often rendered mindfulness; closer to keeping-in-mind than to commemoration.
How the word shifts
Modern English can make remembrance merely solemn memory. Older uses include obligation.
remembering
The civic and liturgical weight; the sense that something is owed.
A story where the word matters
Nearby words
Neighbors, not translations of one concept.
From this word
When we remember, are we retrieving a past, or making a present in which the past can still act?
One question remains
What does this word let us notice that English “consciousness” does not?
It lets us notice that some knowing is a keeping, not a having.