the.com/amnesty
the legal eraser that wipes your crimes like they were never written.
means An official pardon that wipes out punishment for a group of offenders, treating their offenses as if they never legally happened.
from From Greek 'amnestia,' meaning 'forgetfulness' or 'a deliberate not-remembering' — built from 'a-' (not) plus the root behind 'mnesis' (memory), the same root that gives us 'amnesia.' So an amnesty is, quite literally, a state-sanctioned act of forgetting: the law agreeing not to recall what you did. It came into English through Latin and French in the late 1500s, carrying that ancient sense of crimes officially struck from memory.
- greek root
- From amnestia, meaning forgetting or oblivion.
- ancient athens
- Athens declared one in 403 BC after civil war.
- vs pardon
- Amnesty forgets the crime; pardon just forgives it.
- the org
- Amnesty International won the 1977 Nobel Peace Prize.
- mass scale
- Often granted to whole groups, not single people.
amnesty international — human rights organization founded in 1961, has 10+ million supporters across 150+ countries
us immigration amnesty 1986 — reagan-era law legalized 2.7 million undocumented immigrants