aide-memoire
/ˌeɪdmɛmˈwɑː
/ /ɛd mɛmwaʀ/noun (plural aides-memoires or aides-memoire pronounced same)
1An aid to the memory, especially a book or note.The idea is to provide an aide-memoire to that eternal question: ‘Did I take my pill today?’...
- Are you looking for the questions, the aide-memoire?
- You can do that working to a written script, you can use aides-memoire, or you can learn the whole thing by heart.
2An informal diplomatic message.Paul himself makes this very point at the outset of his book, arguing that when Roosevelt and Churchill secretly negotiated the Hyde Park aide-memoire in September 1944, they agreed to continue postwar atomic cooperation....
- The country has sent an aide memoire to Senator Obama, Congressman Charlie Rangel, chairman of the powerful Ways and Means Committee of the United States House of Representatives, and several other elected officials.
- He went on to relate how only four months later, in August 1958, the Netherlands sent an aide memoire to the British proposing that the division of the territorial seas and continental shelf should be defined in accordance with this principle of equidistance.
Origin
Mid 19th century: from French aide-mémoire, from aider 'to help' and mémoire 'memory'.