Dictionary

forgetty en · ADJ · etymology 1

Pronunciation

• /fəˈɡɛti/ (Received-Pronunciation)
• /fɚˈɡɛti/ (General-American)
• [-ɾi] (General-American)

Etymology

From forget + -y (“having the quality of; inclined to”).

Meanings

1. Tending to forget things, forgetful.
   • Please tell me what is D. F.’s name? I ought to remember but am so “forgetty”! 1896 January 30, “The Conversation Corner”, in The Congregationalist, page 179:
2. In a state of forgetting, having forgotten.
   • We are over here, I see that, and all that is over there, and this over hereness and that over thereness is a small part of infinite other relations of hereness and thereness, I see all this, but then I get a bit forgetty, and, just, don’t have this particular-in-aggregate setup in my head, and I say something like “I forget where we are.” 2012, Padgett Powell, You & Me, page 12:

Forms

forgetty en · NOUN · etymology 2

Pronunciation

• /fəˈɡɛti/ (Received-Pronunciation)
• /fɚˈɡɛti/ (General-American)
• [-ɾi] (General-American)

Etymology

Coined or popularized by Cordwainer Smith (see quotations below). Seemingly from forget + -y (suffix forming diminutive or familiar nouns).

Meanings

1. A person whose memory has been erased or damaged.
   • Alma came out of the cube Finisternis as a forgetty, conditioned to remember nothing of her long sad psychotic life before the Instrumentality had sent her on a wild mission among the stars. 1965, Cordwainer Smith, “Three to a Given Star”, in Galaxy, volume 24, page 127:
   • “You ever been feverish before?” “Once. I only forgot about a year and a half.” […] “I’ll be a fresh forgetty in a day or two, and you don’t keep somebody in jail when they don’t even remember breaking the law.” 1987, Rory Harper, “Snorkeling in the River Lethe”, in Amazing Stories, volume 61, page 120:
   • She had thought in the past of autoforgetting with dread and fear, feeling something unclean and wretched about being a forgetty. But there was something worse, a whole universe of somethings-worse. 1979, M.A. Foster, Gameplayers of Zan, page 27:
   • Forgetties were barely above underpeople in status. They were persons convicted of various major crimes, to whom the courts of the worlds, or the Instrumentality, had allowed total amnesia instead of death or some punishment worse than death 1965, Cordwainer Smith, “On the storm planet”, in When the People Fell, published 2012, page 517:

Forms

wikipedia: Cordwainer Smith