memoire

Mémoire is a term used in French to denote memory and recollection. In English, the form without diacritics—memoire—appears mainly in historical or scholarly usage, while the cognate nouns memory and memoir serve more common purposes. The word derives from Latin memoria and entered Old French before evolving into the modern forms found in many languages. In French, the plural mémoire is mémoires and refers to both memory in general and reminiscence; when used as a literary genre, the plural mémoires denotes memoirs, or life-writing accounts.

In psychology and cognitive science, memory refers to the processes by which information is encoded, stored, and retrieved. The memory system is commonly divided into sensory memory, short-term or working memory, and long-term memory. Long-term memory is further categorized as explicit (declarative) memory, including episodic and semantic components, and implicit (procedural) memory, such as skills and conditioned responses. Memory encoding is influenced by attention, emotion, and repetition, and retrieval can be affected by context and interference. Memory disorders include amnesia and other conditions that impair storage or recall.

Mémoires also denotes a literary genre of life writing, recounting personal experiences and historical events from a first-person perspective. In computing, mémoire refers to data storage and memory hardware, including primary memory (RAM) and secondary storage (drives, SSDs, disks). The term highlights the role of memory as both a cognitive faculty and a practical resource for storing information.