Other forms: reminded, reminds, reminding
To remind someone is to make them think of something they were about to forget. The note on the fridge, the phone buzzing at ten to nine, your mother asking whether you have packed a coat.
The person always comes first: you remind SOMEONE of something, or remind someone TO do it, or remind someone THAT the shop shuts at six. You cannot remind a fact on its own, and you cannot remind yourself out of thin air, so you set a reminder instead. The second use is about resemblance, and it makes one of the friendliest sentences in English: you remind me of your father, this town reminds me of Naples. Keep the pair straight, because you remember something yourself but you remind another person. The noun reminder covers the note on the fridge and the stern letter from the dentist alike.
1verbremindTo make someone remember something they have to do or know.
“Remind me to call the plumber tomorrow.”
2verbthinkTo make someone think of a person or thing because of a resemblance.
“The smell of the corridor reminded her of school.”
Too few real examples of this word to estimate which sense is commonest.
Remind is a young word, from the middle of the 17th century, and a plain one: re- plus mind, to bring back to mind. It pushed out the older English verb myndgian and probably stepped into the place of the clumsy rememorate. Behind mind lies the ancient root men-, to think, the same one under memory, mental and mention.
Proto-Indo-European
*men-
Proto-Indo-European
*méntis — thought
Proto-Germanic
*mundiz
Proto-West Germanic
*mundi
Old English
mynd
Middle English
minde
English
mind
English, today
remind
Built from
From mid 17th century, equivalent to re- + mind. Probably suggested by obsolete rememorate with the same sense. Displaced myndgian. mind comes from Middle English minde, munde, imynde, imunde, ȝemynde, ȝemunde, from Old English mynd, ġemynd (“mind, memory”), from Proto-West Germanic mundi, gamundi, from Proto-Germanic mundiz, gamundiz (“memory, remembrance”), from Proto-Indo-European méntis (“thought”) (compare also mantis, via Greek), from the root men- (“to think”). Cognate with Old High German gimunt "mind, memory, remembrance"; Middle High German munst (“love, benevolence, joy”), Old Norse mynd (“image, model”), Gothic 𐌲𐌰𐌼𐌿𐌽𐌳𐍃 (“remembrance, memory, mind”). Related also to Danish minde (“memory”), Norwegian Bokmål, Norwegian Nynorsk and Swedish minne (“memory”), Faroese and Icelandic minni (“memory, recall, recollection”), Latin mēns (“mind, reason”), Sanskrit मनस्, Ancient Greek μένος, Albanian mënd (“mind, reason”). Related to mantra. Compare also Old English myntan (“to mean, intend, purpose, determine, resolve”). More at mint#Etymology 3.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA