"memory lane" meaning in English

See memory lane in All languages combined, or Wiktionary

Noun

IPA: /ˈmɛm(ə)ɹi ˌleɪn/ [General-American, Received-Pronunciation] Audio: en-au-memory lane.ogg [Australia] Forms: memory lanes [plural]
Head templates: {{en-noun}} memory lane (plural memory lanes)
  1. (idiomatic, sometimes capitalized) A nostalgic or sentimental journey through one's memories of an experience or other time in the past. Tags: capitalized, idiomatic, sometimes Categories (topical): Fictional locations, Memory, Nostalgia Translations (set of recollections available to be reviewed): muistojen polku (Finnish), morriña [feminine] (Galician), (Schwelgen in) Erinnerungen (German), nosztalgiázás (Hungarian), nosztalgia (Hungarian), bóithrín na smaointe [masculine] (Irish), but see powspominać [imperfective] (Polish), staza uspomena [feminine] (Serbo-Croatian), minnenas allé (Swedish)

Inflected forms

Download JSON data for memory lane meaning in English (6.7kB)

{
  "forms": [
    {
      "form": "memory lanes",
      "tags": [
        "plural"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "head_templates": [
    {
      "args": {},
      "expansion": "memory lane (plural memory lanes)",
      "name": "en-noun"
    }
  ],
  "hyphenation": [
    "me‧mo‧ry"
  ],
  "lang": "English",
  "lang_code": "en",
  "pos": "noun",
  "senses": [
    {
      "categories": [
        {
          "kind": "other",
          "name": "English entries with incorrect language header",
          "parents": [
            "Entries with incorrect language header",
            "Entry maintenance"
          ],
          "source": "w"
        },
        {
          "kind": "other",
          "name": "English entries with topic categories using raw markup",
          "parents": [
            "Entries with topic categories using raw markup",
            "Entry maintenance"
          ],
          "source": "w"
        },
        {
          "kind": "other",
          "name": "English terms with non-redundant non-automated sortkeys",
          "parents": [
            "Terms with non-redundant non-automated sortkeys",
            "Entry maintenance"
          ],
          "source": "w"
        },
        {
          "kind": "topical",
          "langcode": "en",
          "name": "Fictional locations",
          "orig": "en:Fictional locations",
          "parents": [
            "Fiction",
            "Artistic works",
            "Art",
            "Culture",
            "Society",
            "All topics",
            "Fundamental"
          ],
          "source": "w"
        },
        {
          "kind": "topical",
          "langcode": "en",
          "name": "Memory",
          "orig": "en:Memory",
          "parents": [
            "Mind",
            "Human",
            "All topics",
            "Fundamental"
          ],
          "source": "w"
        },
        {
          "kind": "topical",
          "langcode": "en",
          "name": "Nostalgia",
          "orig": "en:Nostalgia",
          "parents": [
            "Emotions",
            "History",
            "Memory",
            "Mind",
            "All topics",
            "Human",
            "Fundamental"
          ],
          "source": "w"
        }
      ],
      "examples": [
        {
          "ref": "1894 December, B[urton] M. Balch, “Memory Lane. A New Year’s Study.”, in Burton M. Balch, editor, Hamilton Literary Monthly, volume 29, number 3, Clinton, N.Y.: Published by the students, Hamilton College, →OCLC, page 101,102",
          "text": "This is Memory Lane—lonely and drear to some, pleasant and gay to others. ... It was New Year's day in the old town, the most hallowed of holidays on Memory Lane; the day when the wharf was deserted, for everyone, great and small, walked over the Lane, many even to the very end.",
          "type": "quotation"
        },
        {
          "ref": "1954 May, Peter De Vries, chapter 3, in The Tunnel of Love, Boston, Mass.: Little, Brown and Company, published July 1954, →OCLC, page 25",
          "text": "\"How about a stroll down Memory Lane. Remember this?\" He thrust a picture at me.",
          "type": "quotation"
        },
        {
          "ref": "1987, Eva Antonia Wilbur-Cruce, “My Earliest Recollections”, in A Beautiful, Cruel Country, Tucson, Ariz.: University of Arizona Press, page 42",
          "text": "My \"memory lane\" is splotched with recollections that have not dimmed or faded in the last seventy-five years. They stand out clear and sharp, but they are splotches just the same. They have no beginning, nor do they trail off to an ending. They are just there like ink splotches on a white wall.",
          "type": "quotation"
        },
        {
          "ref": "1989, Margaret Maron, Corpus Christmas (A Crime Club Book), Warner Books edition, New York, N.Y.: Mysterious Press, published 2001, page 255",
          "text": "Sigrid took a bittersweet trip down memory lane when Anne opened the carton of ornaments and lifted out a crumpled tinsel star. All at once she was three years old again and her father was holding her up in his strong arms to place that same star on the very top of their Christmas tree.",
          "type": "quotation"
        },
        {
          "ref": "1989, Larry L. Meyer, “August 16: An Irish Wedding Revisited”, in My Summer with Molly: The Journal of a Second Generation Father, Huntington Beach, Calif.: Calafia Press, page 146",
          "text": "Molly sleeps this morning as her parents, per their promise, travel down memory lane from their just-delivered leather sofa. Tim and I have memory-goaders galore, including our album of wedding photos, two separate videotapes of the marriage ceremony, and some random 35-millimeter slides one or the other of us somehow managed to squeeze off that strange and signal day exactly one year and four days ago.",
          "type": "quotation"
        },
        {
          "ref": "1994, Raphael Samuel, “Dreamscapes”, in Theatres of Memory, volumes 1 (Past and Present in Contemporary Culture), London, New York, N.Y.: Verso Books, part V (Old Photographs), page 351",
          "text": "A more straightforwardly nostalgic use of the family album is in oral history, which has used them as a device for family reconstitution and opening up memory lanes.",
          "type": "quotation"
        },
        {
          "ref": "2020 December 2, Paul Bigland, “My weirdest and wackiest Rover yet”, in Rail, page 67",
          "text": "I decide to take in one last trip for the day - and one very much down memory lane. Changing trains at Central, I board a Class 150 bound for Barry Island, where I have not been for 46 years.",
          "type": "quotation"
        }
      ],
      "glosses": [
        "A nostalgic or sentimental journey through one's memories of an experience or other time in the past."
      ],
      "id": "en-memory_lane-en-noun-OovhCXec",
      "links": [
        [
          "capitalized",
          "capitalisation"
        ],
        [
          "nostalgic",
          "nostalgic"
        ],
        [
          "sentimental",
          "sentimental"
        ],
        [
          "journey",
          "journey"
        ],
        [
          "memories",
          "memory"
        ],
        [
          "experience",
          "experience"
        ],
        [
          "time",
          "time"
        ],
        [
          "past",
          "past"
        ]
      ],
      "raw_glosses": [
        "(idiomatic, sometimes capitalized) A nostalgic or sentimental journey through one's memories of an experience or other time in the past."
      ],
      "tags": [
        "capitalized",
        "idiomatic",
        "sometimes"
      ],
      "translations": [
        {
          "code": "fi",
          "lang": "Finnish",
          "sense": "set of recollections available to be reviewed",
          "word": "muistojen polku"
        },
        {
          "code": "gl",
          "lang": "Galician",
          "sense": "set of recollections available to be reviewed",
          "tags": [
            "feminine"
          ],
          "word": "morriña"
        },
        {
          "code": "de",
          "lang": "German",
          "sense": "set of recollections available to be reviewed",
          "word": "(Schwelgen in) Erinnerungen"
        },
        {
          "code": "hu",
          "lang": "Hungarian",
          "sense": "set of recollections available to be reviewed",
          "word": "nosztalgiázás"
        },
        {
          "code": "hu",
          "lang": "Hungarian",
          "sense": "set of recollections available to be reviewed",
          "word": "nosztalgia"
        },
        {
          "code": "ga",
          "lang": "Irish",
          "sense": "set of recollections available to be reviewed",
          "tags": [
            "masculine"
          ],
          "word": "bóithrín na smaointe"
        },
        {
          "code": "pl",
          "lang": "Polish",
          "note": "no equivalent term in Polish",
          "sense": "set of recollections available to be reviewed"
        },
        {
          "code": "pl",
          "lang": "Polish",
          "sense": "set of recollections available to be reviewed",
          "tags": [
            "imperfective"
          ],
          "word": "but see powspominać"
        },
        {
          "code": "sh",
          "lang": "Serbo-Croatian",
          "sense": "set of recollections available to be reviewed",
          "tags": [
            "feminine"
          ],
          "word": "staza uspomena"
        },
        {
          "code": "sv",
          "lang": "Swedish",
          "sense": "set of recollections available to be reviewed",
          "word": "minnenas allé"
        }
      ]
    }
  ],
  "sounds": [
    {
      "ipa": "/ˈmɛm(ə)ɹi ˌleɪn/",
      "tags": [
        "General-American",
        "Received-Pronunciation"
      ]
    },
    {
      "audio": "en-au-memory lane.ogg",
      "mp3_url": "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/transcoded/8/89/En-au-memory_lane.ogg/En-au-memory_lane.ogg.mp3",
      "ogg_url": "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/89/En-au-memory_lane.ogg",
      "tags": [
        "Australia"
      ],
      "text": "Audio (AU)"
    }
  ],
  "word": "memory lane"
}
{
  "forms": [
    {
      "form": "memory lanes",
      "tags": [
        "plural"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "head_templates": [
    {
      "args": {},
      "expansion": "memory lane (plural memory lanes)",
      "name": "en-noun"
    }
  ],
  "hyphenation": [
    "me‧mo‧ry"
  ],
  "lang": "English",
  "lang_code": "en",
  "pos": "noun",
  "senses": [
    {
      "categories": [
        "English countable nouns",
        "English entries with incorrect language header",
        "English entries with topic categories using raw markup",
        "English idioms",
        "English lemmas",
        "English multiword terms",
        "English nouns",
        "English terms with IPA pronunciation",
        "English terms with audio links",
        "English terms with non-redundant non-automated sortkeys",
        "English terms with quotations",
        "en:Fictional locations",
        "en:Memory",
        "en:Nostalgia"
      ],
      "examples": [
        {
          "ref": "1894 December, B[urton] M. Balch, “Memory Lane. A New Year’s Study.”, in Burton M. Balch, editor, Hamilton Literary Monthly, volume 29, number 3, Clinton, N.Y.: Published by the students, Hamilton College, →OCLC, page 101,102",
          "text": "This is Memory Lane—lonely and drear to some, pleasant and gay to others. ... It was New Year's day in the old town, the most hallowed of holidays on Memory Lane; the day when the wharf was deserted, for everyone, great and small, walked over the Lane, many even to the very end.",
          "type": "quotation"
        },
        {
          "ref": "1954 May, Peter De Vries, chapter 3, in The Tunnel of Love, Boston, Mass.: Little, Brown and Company, published July 1954, →OCLC, page 25",
          "text": "\"How about a stroll down Memory Lane. Remember this?\" He thrust a picture at me.",
          "type": "quotation"
        },
        {
          "ref": "1987, Eva Antonia Wilbur-Cruce, “My Earliest Recollections”, in A Beautiful, Cruel Country, Tucson, Ariz.: University of Arizona Press, page 42",
          "text": "My \"memory lane\" is splotched with recollections that have not dimmed or faded in the last seventy-five years. They stand out clear and sharp, but they are splotches just the same. They have no beginning, nor do they trail off to an ending. They are just there like ink splotches on a white wall.",
          "type": "quotation"
        },
        {
          "ref": "1989, Margaret Maron, Corpus Christmas (A Crime Club Book), Warner Books edition, New York, N.Y.: Mysterious Press, published 2001, page 255",
          "text": "Sigrid took a bittersweet trip down memory lane when Anne opened the carton of ornaments and lifted out a crumpled tinsel star. All at once she was three years old again and her father was holding her up in his strong arms to place that same star on the very top of their Christmas tree.",
          "type": "quotation"
        },
        {
          "ref": "1989, Larry L. Meyer, “August 16: An Irish Wedding Revisited”, in My Summer with Molly: The Journal of a Second Generation Father, Huntington Beach, Calif.: Calafia Press, page 146",
          "text": "Molly sleeps this morning as her parents, per their promise, travel down memory lane from their just-delivered leather sofa. Tim and I have memory-goaders galore, including our album of wedding photos, two separate videotapes of the marriage ceremony, and some random 35-millimeter slides one or the other of us somehow managed to squeeze off that strange and signal day exactly one year and four days ago.",
          "type": "quotation"
        },
        {
          "ref": "1994, Raphael Samuel, “Dreamscapes”, in Theatres of Memory, volumes 1 (Past and Present in Contemporary Culture), London, New York, N.Y.: Verso Books, part V (Old Photographs), page 351",
          "text": "A more straightforwardly nostalgic use of the family album is in oral history, which has used them as a device for family reconstitution and opening up memory lanes.",
          "type": "quotation"
        },
        {
          "ref": "2020 December 2, Paul Bigland, “My weirdest and wackiest Rover yet”, in Rail, page 67",
          "text": "I decide to take in one last trip for the day - and one very much down memory lane. Changing trains at Central, I board a Class 150 bound for Barry Island, where I have not been for 46 years.",
          "type": "quotation"
        }
      ],
      "glosses": [
        "A nostalgic or sentimental journey through one's memories of an experience or other time in the past."
      ],
      "links": [
        [
          "capitalized",
          "capitalisation"
        ],
        [
          "nostalgic",
          "nostalgic"
        ],
        [
          "sentimental",
          "sentimental"
        ],
        [
          "journey",
          "journey"
        ],
        [
          "memories",
          "memory"
        ],
        [
          "experience",
          "experience"
        ],
        [
          "time",
          "time"
        ],
        [
          "past",
          "past"
        ]
      ],
      "raw_glosses": [
        "(idiomatic, sometimes capitalized) A nostalgic or sentimental journey through one's memories of an experience or other time in the past."
      ],
      "tags": [
        "capitalized",
        "idiomatic",
        "sometimes"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "sounds": [
    {
      "ipa": "/ˈmɛm(ə)ɹi ˌleɪn/",
      "tags": [
        "General-American",
        "Received-Pronunciation"
      ]
    },
    {
      "audio": "en-au-memory lane.ogg",
      "mp3_url": "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/transcoded/8/89/En-au-memory_lane.ogg/En-au-memory_lane.ogg.mp3",
      "ogg_url": "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/89/En-au-memory_lane.ogg",
      "tags": [
        "Australia"
      ],
      "text": "Audio (AU)"
    }
  ],
  "translations": [
    {
      "code": "fi",
      "lang": "Finnish",
      "sense": "set of recollections available to be reviewed",
      "word": "muistojen polku"
    },
    {
      "code": "gl",
      "lang": "Galician",
      "sense": "set of recollections available to be reviewed",
      "tags": [
        "feminine"
      ],
      "word": "morriña"
    },
    {
      "code": "de",
      "lang": "German",
      "sense": "set of recollections available to be reviewed",
      "word": "(Schwelgen in) Erinnerungen"
    },
    {
      "code": "hu",
      "lang": "Hungarian",
      "sense": "set of recollections available to be reviewed",
      "word": "nosztalgiázás"
    },
    {
      "code": "hu",
      "lang": "Hungarian",
      "sense": "set of recollections available to be reviewed",
      "word": "nosztalgia"
    },
    {
      "code": "ga",
      "lang": "Irish",
      "sense": "set of recollections available to be reviewed",
      "tags": [
        "masculine"
      ],
      "word": "bóithrín na smaointe"
    },
    {
      "code": "pl",
      "lang": "Polish",
      "note": "no equivalent term in Polish",
      "sense": "set of recollections available to be reviewed"
    },
    {
      "code": "pl",
      "lang": "Polish",
      "sense": "set of recollections available to be reviewed",
      "tags": [
        "imperfective"
      ],
      "word": "but see powspominać"
    },
    {
      "code": "sh",
      "lang": "Serbo-Croatian",
      "sense": "set of recollections available to be reviewed",
      "tags": [
        "feminine"
      ],
      "word": "staza uspomena"
    },
    {
      "code": "sv",
      "lang": "Swedish",
      "sense": "set of recollections available to be reviewed",
      "word": "minnenas allé"
    }
  ],
  "word": "memory lane"
}

This page is a part of the kaikki.org machine-readable English dictionary. This dictionary is based on structured data extracted on 2024-05-05 from the enwiktionary dump dated 2024-05-02 using wiktextract (f4fd8c9 and c9440ce). The data shown on this site has been post-processed and various details (e.g., extra categories) removed, some information disambiguated, and additional data merged from other sources. See the raw data download page for the unprocessed wiktextract data.

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