souvenir means an item of sentimental value, that is given or kept to remember an event or location. It carries an Arena rating of 1494, earned across 2 head-to-head judged battles.
Among words judged in Lexicurio's Arena, souvenir ranks #614 of 17,127 for Words That Escaped Their Books, #1,897 of 42,747 for Qualifying, #4,942 of 17,126 for Most Elegant Words, #5,055 of 17,143 for Best Fossil-Poetry Words.
souvenir is pronounced /ˌsuː.vəˈnɪə/.
Why “souvenir” is a great word
A material artifact kept as a tactile reminder of a specific place, event, or experience. Its journey into English, recorded by 1775, flows from the French *souvenir* (literally "memory"), itself from the Old French verb *souvenir*, "to remember," which rises from the Latin *subvenīre*—"to come to mind, occur to"—a compound of *sub-* ("up from below") and *venīre* ("to come"). Unlike a "memento," which is a typically personal, often unpurchased relic of a person or past event, or a "keepsake," a token of affection rooted in personal relationships, the souvenir is the secular relic of travel, the purchased proof. It is the heavy snow globe from a coastal town that never sees snow, the faded ticket stub from a concert long forgotten, the crudely carved figurine that outlives the memory of the market where it was bought—a small, solid anchor for a feeling already dissolving into the past.
Etymology
Unadapted borrowing from French souvenir (literally “memory”). Compare memento.
noun
- An item of sentimental value, that is given or kept to remember an event or location.e.g.“Back then, nobody knew in the schoolyard / Now then, you have grown up to be this hard / Go then, walk through this world with your heart scarred / You're the souvenir of sadness” — 2005, “Souvenir”, performed by Korn:
verb
- To take (something) as a souvenir, especially illicitly, for example during wartime.e.g.“"Doubletime up to the ville and souvenir me one cute orphan, man, but be sure you get a dirty one, a really skuzzy one."” — 1979, Gustav Hasford, The Short-Timers, New York: Bantam Books, published 1980, →ISBN, page 57:
Definitions & examples from Wiktionary (CC BY-SA 3.0).
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