Engram
name, noun ·Uncommon ·Advanced level
Definitions
- 1 A postulated physical or biochemical change in neural tissue that represents a memory.
"I use the word engram to denote this permanent change wrought by a stimulus; the sum of such engrams in an organism may be called its "engram-store," among which must distinguish inherited from acquired engrams."
- 2 a postulated biochemical change (presumably in neural tissue) that represents a memory wordnet
- 3 A painful, negative mental image representing a past event.
- 1 A surname transferred from the given name, a rare variant of Ingram.
- 2 an enneagram, a nine-pointed figure.
- 3 N-gram, a subsequence.
Example
More examples"I use the word engram to denote this permanent change wrought by a stimulus; the sum of such engrams in an organism may be called its "engram-store," among which must distinguish inherited from acquired engrams."
Etymology
Borrowed from German Engramm which was coined by German evolutionary biologist Richard Semon in 1904. First attested in English in 1921 (see quotation below). Ultimately from Ancient Greek ἐν (en, “in”) + γράμμα (grámma, “writing, picture”).
Related phrases
More for "engram"
Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.