Definitions

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • noun System of training to improve the memory.
  • noun A memory card game in which a pack of cards is spread out face down and players try to turn up pairs with the same symbol.

Etymologies

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

Named after the Pelman Institute, founded in London in 1898.

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Examples

  • You go through the chuppah of explosive purity, as the conveyor belt takes 15 buckets of your clothes and personal belongings, like some life-or-death game of pelmanism.

    Top stories from Times Online 2009

  • You go through the chuppah of explosive purity, as the conveyor belt takes 15 buckets of your clothes and personal belongings, like some life-or-death game of pelmanism.

    Top stories from Times Online 2009

Comments

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  • From John Le Carre's "The Spy Who Came in from the Cold": "Leamas who normally read nothing, read newspapers slowly and with concentration. He remembered details, like the names and addresses of people who were subject of small news items. He did it unconsciously as a kind of private PELMANISM, and it absorbed him entirely." Pocketbooks trade paperback, 12-01, p. 86 Pelmanism used here is a kind of unconcious fixation or mental fetish.

    April 3, 2009