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.

---

collective memory British  

noun

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

---

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

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 • Oct. 23, 2025

But just as important is a Thai collective memory of loss and humiliation at the ICJ which cuts to the heart of the border dispute.

From BBC • Aug. 20, 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