souvenir

Etymology

It is borrowed from French souvenir (“memory; keepsake”),^[2][3][4][5] a noun use of the verb se souvenir (“to remember”),^[3][6][7] from Old French suvenir (“to come to mind, remember”),^[2][4] from Latin subveniō (“to come to mind, come up”),^[2][8][3] from sub- (“up from below”) and veniō (“to come”),^[4][9] from Proto-Indo-European *gwa- (“to go, come”).^[4][8] The Old French noun meant "a memory" from the end of the 13th century and "a memento" from 1676; the verb is recorded from about 1100.^[2] souvenir, souvenir and souvenir are also from French.^[2]

Earliest recorded meaning

A remembrance or memory: 1775, in the letters of Horace Walpole.^[3][4][2]

Semantic evolution

The sense "a token of remembrance, a keepsake" is first recorded in a jeweller's stock catalogue of 1776,^[2] or in 1782 according to Barnhart and Etymonline,^[3][4] and it soon became the main meaning, especially of a small, cheap article bought as a reminder of a place.^[2][10] From 1798 a souvenir was also an illustrated annual sold as a gift, now historical.^[2] The older sense, a memory, is now literary or rare.^[2][10] In the First World War soldiers called a shell or bullet a souvenir and used the verb for wounding with one,^[2] and Australian soldiers used the verb for taking things as trophies, a euphemism for stealing;^[11] the OED's first record of the verb in that sense is Australian, from 1897.^[2] Collins still labels it Australian and New Zealand slang.^[7]

Timeline

• 1775 – a remembrance, a memory.^[2][3]
• 1776 – a keepsake, a memento.^[2]
• 1782 – a token of remembrance.^[3][4]
• 1798 – an illustrated gift annual.^[2]
• 1842 – verb, to commemorate with a souvenir.^[2]
• 1897 – verb, to take as a souvenir; to pilfer.^[2]
• 1915 – military slang, a shell or bullet; to wound with one.^[2]
• 1919 – a trophy, or something stolen, in Australian soldiers' slang.^[11]

Meanings

Noun

1. Something kept or bought as a reminder of a place, person or event; a memento or keepsake: He brought back a souvenir mug from Lisbon.^[12][7][2]
2. (literary) A memory; an act of remembering.^[12][2][10]

Verb

1. (Australia, New Zealand, informal) To take something as a souvenir; euphemistically, to steal it.^{[7][2][12][11]}
2. To commemorate with a souvenir; usually in the passive.^[2]

Word family

• souvenir sheet

Related words

• subvention
• subvene
• venue
• come

References

1. ^ a b Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s t u v Oxford English Dictionary Online (accessed March 2026), Oxford: Oxford University Press
3. ^ a b c d e f g Barnhart, Robert K. (1988), The Barnhart Dictionary of Etymology
4. ^ a b c d e f g Harper, Douglas. Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com
5. ^ Hoad, T. F., ed. (1986), The Concise Oxford Dictionary of English Etymology, Oxford: Clarendon Press
6. ^ Dictionary.com Unabridged (2016), based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, New York: Random House
7. ^ a b c d Collins English Dictionary (2023), Glasgow: HarperCollins
8. ^ a b The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (online 2024), 5th ed., Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
9. ^ Klein, Ernest. A Comprehensive Etymological Dictionary of the English Language. 2 vols. Amsterdam: Elsevier, 1966–1967.
10. ^ a b c Shorter Oxford English Dictionary on Historical Principles (2002), 5th ed., ed. William R. Trumble and Angus Stevenson, Oxford: Oxford University Press
11. ^ a b c Green, Jonathon (2010), Green's Dictionary of Slang, London: Chambers; digital ed. 2016–, https://greensdictofslang.com
12. ^ a b c Merriam-Webster Unabridged Dictionary (2024), online ed., Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster