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Jul 6, 2004

This week's theme
Miscellaneous words

This week's words
tchotchke
eidetic
mimesis
bootless
malarkey

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eidetic

adjective: Marked by extraordinarily accurate and vivid recall.

From German eidetisch, from Greek eidetikos, from eidos (form), ultimately from the Indo-European root weid- (to see) that is the source of words such as wise, view, supervise, and wit.

"Jorge Semprun really does know hundreds of poems, he says. When he was young, he had a near eidetic memory, 'but these days my memory is more selective.'"
Helen Kaye; Memory and Commitment; Jerusalem Post (Israel); Apr 3, 1997.

"The mother is desperate and the child, as it happens, has an eidetic memory and detailed information about the villain's illicit businesses."
Don D'Ammassa; The Mocking Program; Science Fiction Chronicle (Radford, Virginia); Jul 1, 2002.

See more usage examples of eidetic in Vocabulary.com's dictionary.

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