collective memory

American  

noun

1. a memory or memories shared or recollected by a group, as a community or culture.

2. any collection of memories passed from one generation to the next.

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collective memory British  

noun

1. the shared memories of a group, family, race, etc

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Example Sentences

In your introduction, you quote Yale Law School’s Jack Balkin, reflecting upon “the use of collective memory in a constitutional argument.”

From Slate • Mar. 16, 2026

But the potlucks of my childhood blur together into a kind of beige collective memory.

From Salon • Mar. 15, 2026

Bellowing "Silence, everyone!" to terrified parliamentarians, the man with a bushy moustache and shiny tricorn quickly caught the public's attention in an image engraved on the nation's collective memory.

From Barron's • Feb. 25, 2026

But Redford the actor was equally exceptional, a charismatic icon who starred in some of the greatest films in the 1970s and ’80s, movies that remain ingrained in our collective memory.

From Los Angeles Times • Sep. 16, 2025

It had been her go-to terror, Weep’s worst collective memory, and she shuddered now to think how blithely she had inflicted it, not understanding, as a child, what it had meant.

From "Strange the Dreamer" by Laini Taylor