memory hole

1 of 2

noun

plural memory holes

: the condition or state of being suppressed, erased, or forgotten (as for political or personal convenience) imagined as a physical place

The answer lies in bipartisan consensus of Republicans and Democrats to let the savings and loan debacle vanish down the memory hole.

—Alexander Cockburn

Sixteen years after Americans troops crossed the Kuwaiti border into Iraq, a war that took the lives of more than 4,400 soldiers and left tens of thousands wounded has disappeared down the American people's collective memory hole.

—Michael A. Cohen and Micah Zenko

A Runner's Journey shows how a lot of that history was shoved down a memory hole—including the political activism that swirled about the Berlin Olympics in 1936 …

—Brian Bethune

The "historically low interest rates," thanks to low inflation, … seem destined … to be consigned to a similar memory hole, to be replaced with some new story about higher inflation yielding higher revenues.

—Andrew Coyne

The paper exerts editorial control over itself, of course, and the question is not one of putting a piece of information down the memory hole, but revisiting whether it was newsworthy to begin with. … The newspaper has established a 10-person committee to examine petitions from people asking to have articles updated—never removed, it's important to add.

—Devin Coldewey

memory-hole

2 of 2

verb

mem·​o·​ry-hole ˈmem-rē-ˌhōl 

ˈme-mə-

variants or memory hole

memory-holed or memory holed; memory-holing or memory holing; memory-holes or memory holes

transitive verb

: to cause (facts, memories, etc. about the past) to be suppressed, erased, or forgotten (as for political or personal convenience)

Republicans have revisited criticism of Biden's Afghanistan withdrawal in light of the White House's recent report, which they accuse of trying to memory-hole the evacuation.

—Brady Knox

A year later, Roxbury's central hub became Nubian Square, memory-holing the name by which it had been known for generations, that of Puritan governor Thomas Dudley.

—Jeff Jacoby

But the fact is, I was an anxious mess when it seemed we were on the brink of a world war. … It's strange to me that I have since somehow memory-holed all that anxiety …

—Lili Loofbourow

Examples of memory hole in a Sentence

Recent Examples on the Web

Noun

In his bid to make Notre Dame the world’s favorite college football team, Bevacqua will be channeling all the moxie and quick thinking of the 19-year-old publicist who helped salvage Rice’s Four Horseman piece from the cultural memory hole that swallows up even the most engaging newspaper stories. —Anthony Crupi, Sportico.com, 22 Nov. 2024

Anyway, by late 1974, when the Woodward–Bernstein book was published, everyone knew the Watergate story chapter and verse, and Nixon had been safely packed away down the memory hole. —Yiyun Li, Harper's Magazine, 23 Sep. 2024

Some of these Marvel Cinematic Universe series (like Secret Invasion) seem to have immediately disappeared down a cultural memory hole, while others (like Ms. Marvel) feel a little redundant with the MCU movie that followed. —Christian Holub, EW.com, 19 Sep. 2024

An unprecedented intervention effectively disappeared down a memory hole. —Adam Tooze, Foreign Affairs, 13 Aug. 2018

Fans wanted to keep it from falling into another memory hole caused by the streaming content machine. —Ben Travers, IndieWire, 28 June 2024

The epic bloodbath has almost disappeared down the memory hole. —Christopher Knight, Los Angeles Times, 7 Dec. 2023

Verb

News organizations are actively engaging in exactly the practice carried out by Winston Smith in Nineteen Eighty-Four, memory-holing their previous publications to fit the new party line. —Michael Brendan Dougherty, National Review, 26 July 2024

Like much of Trump’s tenure, the specifics of this fiasco have been memory-holed in the broader cloud of scandal and mismanagement. —New York Daily News Editorial Board, New York Daily News, 11 Jan. 2024

Word History

Etymology

Verb

derivative of memory hole

First Known Use

Noun

1956, in the meaning defined above

Verb

1980, in the meaning defined above