a statue, building, ceremony, or other object that helps people remember and honor a person or event, especially someone who has died
Tourists placed flowers at the memorial for the fallen soldiers.
The town built a new memorial to honor the firefighters who saved many lives.
✦ From Latin memoria ‘memory’ plus the suffix-al, entering English in the 14th century.
relating to remembering and honoring a person or event, especially someone who has died
A memorial service will be held on Sunday morning.
The charity created a memorial scholarship in her name.
✦ Derived from the noun sense, used adjectivally since the 18th century.
a written statement of facts, often presented to an authority as a petition or record
The activists submitted a detailed memorial to the parliament demanding new safety laws.
Lawyers prepared a memorial summarizing the case for the judge.
✦ This formal legal sense grew from the idea of a document that preserves a memory, first recorded in English in the late 16th century.
