The action or faculty of remembering something; a memory of a past event or experience.
From Latin recollectio, from re- meaning 'again' and colligere meaning 'to gather'. The word literally means 'a gathering again' of thoughts or memories. It entered English in the 14th century through Old French, emphasizing the active process of bringing memories back together.
The etymology of 'recollection' beautifully captures what modern neuroscience has discovered about memory - that remembering is indeed an active process of 'gathering' scattered neural traces back together. Each time we recollect something, we're literally reconstructing the memory, which explains why memories can change over time.
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