anterograde amnesia
1
9.1
- noun
- /ˌæntəroʊˈɡreɪd æmˈniːziə/
- Specialized
:
amnesia anterógrada
- The man experienced anterograde amnesia following his trauma, as he could recall his childhood but struggled to remember recent events.
Examples
-
Her anterograde amnesia made it challenging for her to retain information from one day to the next.
-
My grandfather had, I think, anterograde amnesia:
Academic text (2010) -
After suffering a head injury, he developed anterograde amnesia, meaning he couldn't remember anything new after the accident.
Synonyms
93
6.7
A loss of memory often after injury, illness, or trauma
40
3.4
A problem when a person cannot remember information or past experiences
1
8.7
Loss of memory for events that happen after a serious head injury
Antonyms
Surface Forms
Morphology
The noun combines 'amnesia' (memory loss) with the modifier 'anterograde' (affecting memories formed after an event), so the overall meaning — inability to form new memories after a trauma — is directly derivable from the parts. Although medical/technical, the compound is compositionally regular and has cognates in many languages, so a learner who knows both constituents can infer the MWE's meaning.
Etymology
Anterograde amnesia comes from the parts anterograde, meaning 'forward', and amnesia, meaning 'loss of memory', and it gives the image of a camera that remembers what happened before but stops recording after a certain point. So, it means a person cannot form new memories after an event.