I´ll remember this!

Words with few synonyms and only one meaning are memorized best

 

 

 

 

To all advertising guys, political consultants and communication coaches: there exist better indicators whether your clients will remember one of your words or whether they won´t than imageability, high frequency or trigger words. The more an expression is unchangeable (only one meaning) and distinctive (no or few synonyms) , the more your memory will keep it regardless which language you are speaking, how big your vocabulary is and what the context seems to be.

These are at least the results of a new US-American study where not any Department of Communication provided the key authors but the MIT (Massachussetts Institute of Technology).

“An avalanche of precise vocabulary has a lot of advantages.” “Avalanche” and “Vocabulary” – unmistaken and with no alternative – were remembered best by the participants. “Precise” and “Advantage” they could memorized least.

Tuckute/Mahowald/Isola/Oliva/Gibson/Fedorenko, “Intrinsically Memorable Words Have Unique Associations With Their Meanings”, in: Journal of Experimental Psychology: General”, 2025, vol. 154, no.8, 2059-2075.

 

From the practice:

Exciting and plausible: a word where your brain needs not to consider what sort of meaning may count here, AND which as the only option mills itself into your memory, is remembered best.

These new learnings expand our opportunities to communicate unforgettably. And still there are even additional criteria how to make your words memorable, criteria which the current study does not even mention: i.e. that a word/sentence needs to be short, not complicated and easily to be pronounced.

Pretty funny for us as German-speaking people: one of the words that were considered to be unchangeable and unforgettable in the study would not at all have the very same effect in our language: Pineapple – cristal-clear and unique in English – turns in German to “Ananas”. And that´s how we also call strawberries. So we may assume that “Ananas” is according to the researchers not the best example for being easily kept in your memory.