the.com/imprinting

means The process by which a young animal (or, loosely, a person) rapidly and often permanently latches onto an early experience — a caregiver, a face, a pattern — as its template for what's normal or lovable.

from From 'imprint,' rooted in the Latin 'imprimere' — 'to press into' (in- 'on' + premere 'to press'), the same root behind printing presses stamping ink into paper. The biological sense was crystallized in the 20th century through ethology, most famously Konrad Lorenz's studies of geese and ducklings following the first moving thing they saw after hatching — sometimes him. The word's printing-press DNA fits neatly: an early experience literally 'stamped' into a young brain, fast and hard to undo.