unforget

From un- (prefix meaning ‘to do the opposite of, reverse (the action specified by the verb to which it is attached)’) +‎ forget.

• (Received Pronunciation) IPA^(key): /ʌnfəˈɡɛt/, (less common) /-fɔː-/

• Audio (RP)

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• (General American) IPA^(key): /ʌnfɚˈɡɛt/, (less common) /-fɔɹ-/
• Rhymes: -ɛt
• Hyphenation: un‧for‧get

unforget (third-person singular simple present unforgets, present participle unforgetting, simple past unforgot, past participle unforgotten)

1. (transitive, informal) To not forget; also, to remember again after forgetting.
   • 1852 January, “A Stranger Here”, in The Quarterly Journal of Prophecy, volume IV, London: James Nisbet and Co., […], →OCLC, stanza VI, page 111:

     I miss them all, for, unforgetting,
     My spirit o'er the past still strays,
     And, much its wasted years regretting,
     It treads again these shaded ways.

   • 1866, Elizabeth Akers [Allen], “My Peace”, in Poems, Boston, Mass.: Ticknor and Fields, →OCLC, stanza 4, page 122:

     My sorrows seem but small and brief,—
     Soon softened into vague regretting;
     I find a balm in every leaf,
     Build ships on every wreck-strewn reef,
     Then blush before this marble Grief,
     Still unforgetting!

   • 1866 November, J. M. Sherwood, editor, Hours at Home; a Popular Magazine of Religious and Useful Literature, volume IV, number 1, New York, N.Y.: Charles Scribner & Co., […], →OCLC, stanza IV, page 47:

     Hither, when soft the autumn sun is setting,
     The duteous mourner shall repair alone;
     With pangs subdued, perchance, but unforgetting
     The pure, sweet virtues of the dear one gone: […]

   • 1884 July, Mary L. Ritter, “Captive”, in The Century Illustrated Magazine, volume VI (New Series; volume XXVIII overall), number 3, New York, N.Y.: The Century Co.; London: F[rederick] Warne & Co., →OCLC, stanza 9, page 398:

     Then from that anguished soul, distraught, a cry!
     "Earth's breaking hearts are countless as her days,
     And He who strung the vibrant chords forgets,
     Or, unforgetting, slays."

   • 1892, John Greenleaf Whittier, “The Pennsylvania Pilgrim”, in The Poetical Works of John Greenleaf Whittier […], volumes I (Narrative and Legendary Poems), Boston, Mass., New York, N.Y.: Houghton Mifflin and Company […], →OCLC, page 328:

     One Scripture rule, at least, was unforgot;
     He hid the outcast, and bewrayed him not; […]

   • 1892, Percy Withers, “Sidney at Penshurst”, in A Selection of Verses from The Manchester University Magazine, 1868–1912 (University of Manchester Publications; no. LXXXVI), Manchester: University Press, published 1913, →OCLC, page 60:

     He first talked lightly, as at any hour
     A father might—in broken sentences—
     Of matters of to-day, and unforgot
     From all the yesterdays; […]

   • 1893, Washington A. Engle, “Canto XXII”, in La Pold and Euridice: A Poem in Twenty-two Books or Cantos […], Hartford, Mich.: Washington A. Engle, →OCLC, page 297:

     How sweet is friendship's sacred lot,
     Where sordid feelings harbor not.
     To feel that we are unforgot
     By those we deeply love.

   • 1906, Arthur Symons, “Emily Brontë”, in The Fool of the World & Other Poems, London: William Heinemann, →OCLC, part IV (Guests), page 72:

     She too was unforgetting: has she yet
     Forgotten that long agony when her breath
     Too fierce for living fanned the flame of death?

   • 1956, Herbert Gold, chapter 13, in The Man Who Was Not With It […] (Second Edition Books), Chapel Hill, N.C.: Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill, published 1987, →ISBN, page 114:

     She could make me forget Grack and Pittsburgh, and then perhaps even remember me enough to unforget them again.

   • 1987, Mark C. Taylor, “Cleaving: Martin Heidegger”, in Altarity, Chicago, Ill., London: University of Chicago Press, →ISBN, page 51:

     Truth is aletheia. A-letheia is the un-concealment that arises through un-forgetting. […] To un-forget the origin is to remember that one has forgotten and to recognize that such forgetting is inescapable. […] The truth "known" in the un-forgetting of a-letheia is a truth that always carries a shadow in the midst of its lighting.

   • 1996, Kathleen Stewart, “Unforgetting: The Anecdotal and the Accidental”, in A Space on the Side of the Road: Cultural Poetics in an “Other” America, Princeton, N.J., Chichester, West Sussex: Princeton University Press, →ISBN, page 71:

     What would happen, for instance, if I tried to unforget the whole series of accidental and contingent encounters through which I entered the dense landscape of the hills?

   • 2010, Ronald Bogue, “Becoming-woman, Becoming-girl: Assia Djebar’s So Vast the Prison”, in Deleuzian Fabulation and the Scars of History, Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, →ISBN, page 132:

     Her [Assia Djebar's] novelistic ‘un-forgetting’ of an occulted past and her confrontation with a perilous national present take her as far back as the fall of Carthage and forward through two millennia of subterranean linguistic and gender memories.

   • 2012, Simon Baker, “Preaching for Today”, in Tim Ling, Lesley Bentley, editors, Developing Faithful Ministers: A Practical and Theological Handbook, London: SCM Press, →ISBN, part 3 (Ministry), page 126:

     Breaking open the word of God in Scripture through preaching is a vital way of un-forgetting. […] Whether in great set-piece sermons or in short intimate homilies the preacher is called upon to help us ‘un-forget’ the one thing that most people find it hardest to believe – that God loves them.

   • 2012, Derek Mitchell, “Remembering and Unforgetting”, in Everyday Phenomenology, Newcastle upon Tyne, Tyne and Wear: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, →ISBN, page 106:

     This is but one of a number of instances of unforgetting throughout the story of Austerlitz through which he pieces together the shreds of his life as he unforgets his life before the Kindertransport and the journey from this life to another in Bala and beyond.

   • 2013, Hélène Cixous, “The Other Cold”, in Beverley Bie Brahic, transl., Twists and Turns in the Heart’s Antarctic, Cambridge, Cambridgeshire, Malden, Mass.: Polity Press, →ISBN, part I, page 44:

     March 24, 2010 as I take down the navy blue folder that has always been devoted to my notes on "style," I notice on opening it that the cover's inner flap is concealed behind a glued-on sheet of paper. […] Without my usual hesitation, I rip it off the way one rips off, unforgets, peels, ferrets out, seeking the pure treasure, proof of the existence of life before us, without us, the book of our dead and of our betrayals.

   • 2017, Florencia Fernandez Cardoso, “How Wide is the Gap? Evaluating Current Documentation of Women Architects in Modern Architecture History Books (2004–2014)”, in Marjan Groot, Helena Seražin, Caterina Franchini, Emilia Garda, Alenka Di Battista, editors, MoMoWo: Women Designers, Craftswomen, Architects and Engineers between 1918 and 1945 (Women’s Creativity; 1), Ljubljana, Slovenia: Založba ZRC, →DOI, →ISBN, →ISSN, page 232:

     These updated, detailed studies have given modern architecture a new face in a history that does not omit the presence of women. They have ‘unforgotten’ great architects like Charlotte Perriand, Lilly Reich and Marion Mahony Griffin.

• un-forget (rare)