HYSTERESIS

A Greek word which means "a coming short, a deficiency." Sir James Alfred Ewing coined this term. He’s a Scottish physicist and engineer (1855-1935). Hysteresis refers to systems, organisms and fields that have memory. Basically, the consequences of an input are experienced with a certain lag time, or delay. One example is seen with iron: iron maintains some magnetization after it has been exposed to and removed from a magnetic field.