Mind
To remember or recall. Used transitively ('I can't mind his name') and intransitively ('do you mind the time we...'). A Scots and Ulster Scots survival that does not match standard English 'mind' (to look after, to be careful).
Etymology
From Older Scots 'mind' (verb), to remember or recollect, itself developed from Old English 'mynd' (memory). The sense survived in Scots and travelled to Ulster with Lowland Scots settlement in the seventeenth century. Standard English kept 'mind' in its protective senses (to mind a child, to mind one's manners) but lost the memory sense by the eighteenth century. The Ulster usage is a direct retention of the older meaning.
In a sentence
Do you mind the night we walked home from the dance? - a memory-prompt question
I can't mind her name, but I'd know the face. - a confessional gap
Historical notes
Mind is one of the most useful diagnostic words for Ulster Scots in everyday speech. A speaker who naturally says 'I can't mind' rather than 'I can't remember' is almost certainly within an Ulster Scots tradition, often inherited rather than chosen. The phrase 'do you mind?' in Ulster carries the older memory sense without ambiguity for the in-group; an outsider may mistakenly hear it as 'do you object?' The misunderstanding is itself a marker of how cleanly Ulster has held onto the older verb.
Sources
- Dictionaries of the Scots Language (DSL), entry MIND v. · dictionary
- Oxford English Dictionary, entry mind v. (sense 'to remember', now Scots and dialectal). · dictionary