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

The event, known as the Nakba, vividly lives on in Palestinian collective memory, and camp residents like Irhil fear the history of displacement -- which many also thought would be temporary in 1948 -- will repeat itself.

From Barron's

Historians are divided, with Athens' Benaki Museum's head archivist Tasos Sakellaropoulos calling the tomb a "place of silent collective memory and respect, not of pain or anger" in Kathimerini daily.

From Barron's

The movie itself seems likely to de-resolve in the collective memory within 29 minutes.

From The Wall Street Journal

Whatever repositories of learning that weren’t destroyed now exist on higher ground in the mountains, where the “knowledge base and collective memory were largely preserved.”

From Los Angeles Times

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