Forgetter

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. Someone who often fails to remember things or information
2. An individual characterized by a tendency to lose or fail to retain memories
3. A person prone to forgetting facts, events, or details over time

Etymology: The word "forgetter" is a plain formation: the verb "forget" with the agent suffix "-er" added to name someone who does the forgetting. The suffix has a long ancestry, travelling from an Indo-European root through Latin "-arius", which came into English by way of Old French "-ier", and it is the same ending found in words like "baker" and "writer". Old English already had its own form of this suffix, so English speakers were attaching it to native verbs well before the French version arrived. The verb "forget" itself is an older, more striking word. Its Old English ancestor "forgietan" meant to lose hold of something mentally, and it carried a prefix "for-" that gave the sense of "away" or "completely," so the verb is about a thorough letting go. "Forgetter" is a much later, more informal noun, built directly from that verb rather than inherited from Old English, and it describes a person defined by that loss rather than a single act of forgetting.