core memory
Word Rarity
Uncommon
Frequency: Zipf frequency 4.47 in modern English
19
Scrabble Score
10
Letters
3
Syllables
6
Unique Chars
Meaning
noun
A type of non-volatile random-access rewritable electronic memory using ferrite cores to magnetically store binary digits (bits).
Countable; Uncountable
noun
A memory, especially one formed in childhood, which recalls a deeply significant event in one's life and can be remembered years later.
Countable; Informal
Example Sentences
- "Wilkes, on his visit to America in summer and fall 1950 had witnessed the core memory being implemented on the Whirlwind at MIT—and as in the case of seeing the control matrix in the same machine, this made a strong impression on him."
- "My high school graduation is a core memory."
- "Grandfather Frahm told young Herbert how his father had been held over a trestle and whipped repeatedly for disobedience, as if serfdom persisted. That had made a lasting imprint on Ludwig Frahm, and the recounting of it made an indelible impression on the grandson, who tells it as one of the core memories of his Lübeck childhood."
- "Our real, inner, deep feelings are our own best teachers about who we really are. We may most often find these in our memories of childhood. It is there that many of our most deeply felt, core experiences lie. These and other memories of our most meaningful moments since childhood will be the fuel for the most powerful, moving writing we will ever do. Writing about these core memories takes us right back to those feelings we had then as well as how we are feeling about them now."
- "My core memories of childhood contain nothing but concrete, brick, cement, steel. Brooklyn is surrounded by the water, jutting into the Atlantic at Coney Island, bordered by the Upper and Lower New York Bays to the west and Jamaica Bay to the east, separated from Manhattan by the East River. Brooklyn had beaches, which had sand, which got tracked into houses laden with vileness. No, for us the borough was so densely urban that the notion of “land” or “sea” never arose. Earth was the name of the planet, not the surface of the world; soil, like dirt, was a bad thing."
- "If life teaches us anything, it’s that we don’t have inexhaustible energy and time. It is perfectly possible to run out of both before we get all our stories written. With this in mind, because you have compiled the Core Memory List, you can identify your most important lifestories—the ones about the prime relationships and events of your life—and concentrate on writing these first. These few core memories serve well as the backbone of your longer lifewriting project. The peripheral stories can be dealt with later—as time and energy permit."
Etymology
* (sense 1): From being a type of computer memory consisting of magnetic cores. * (sense 2): Popularized by the Pixar film Inside Out (2015), in which the character Riley has five "core memories", each forming the foundation of a "personality island" which represents an aspect of Riley's personality.