Forget

Forget is a verb meaning to fail to recall or to fail to keep something in mind. It can also mean to cease to think about or to forgo. The word comes from Old English forgietan, from for- “away” + geitan “to get.”

In cognitive psychology, forgetting is the loss of information that was previously encoded and stored in memory. It can result from encoding failure (information never stored), storage decay, or retrieval failure (difficulty accessing stored information). Interference from other memories—proactive interference, where older memories hinder new ones, and retroactive interference, where new information hinders older memories—also contributes. The forgetting curve, described by Hermann Ebbinghaus, shows rapid forgetting soon after learning, followed by a slower rate of loss. Retrieval cues, context, and state-dependent effects can influence whether a memory is accessible at a given moment.

Forgetting can be normal, especially with aging. Pathological forgetting, by contrast, occurs in disorders such as anterograde amnesia (inability to form new memories) or retrograde amnesia (loss of some past memories), and in neurodegenerative diseases like Alzheimer's disease. Common categories of forgetting include transience (temporary lapse in memory), absent-mindedness (inattention leading to forgetting), and blocking (temporary inability to retrieve a known memory). The memory can also be distorted, leading to false memories or misattributions.

People forget everyday information due to fatigue, stress, distractions, or insufficient encoding. Strategies to reduce forgetting include spaced repetition, elaborative encoding, retrieval practice, and using mnemonic devices and contextual cues to improve recall.