Semantic memory
Your store of general facts, concepts, and word meanings.
What it means
Semantic memory is the long-term store of general world knowledge — facts, concepts, vocabulary, and their relations — abstracted away from the particular episodes in which it was acquired. It contrasts with episodic memory, which preserves the context of specific experiences, and it is typically retrieved with a sense of 'knowing' rather than 'remembering.' Knowledge in it is thought to be organized into networks of interrelated concepts, so that activating one concept primes related ones. It is comparatively robust, often surviving the amnesias and aging that impair episodic recall. It is the substrate for language, categorization, and inference.
Examples
Knowing that a canary is a bird, that birds have feathers, and what 'feather' means all draw on semantic memory.
You know Paris is the capital of France with no memory whatsoever of the classroom where you learned it — the fact survived, the episode did not.
A patient with dense amnesia cannot recall this morning's visit, yet still defines 'umbrella' and names the seasons: general knowledge outlasts the record of particular events.
First described in Distinction by Tulving (1972); networks by Collins & Quillian (1969).