Memento

WORD OF THE DAY

memento / noun / muh-MEN-toh

Definition

1: something that serves to warn or remind

2: souvenir

Examples

The box on the shelf in her closet is filled with mementos of Julie's basketball career—awards, newspaper clippings, team photographs, and her old uniform.

"Old photos and other mementos from his father's time in the military covered the small table." 

— Amaris Castillo, The Lowell (Massachusetts) Sun, 6 Oct. 2018

Did You Know?

Memento comes from the imperative form of meminisse, a Latin verb that literally means "to remember." (The term memento mori, meaning "a reminder of mortality," translates as "remember that you must die.") 

The history of memento makes it clear where its spelling came from, but because a memento often helps one remember a particular moment, people occasionally spell the term momento. 

This is usually considered a misspelling, but it appears often enough in edited prose to have been entered in most dictionaries as an acceptable variant spelling.