“It was nae sic thing,” said Madge, whose unretentive memory let out, in the eagerness of contradiction, all that she would have most wished to keep concealed, had her judgment been equal to her inclination.    From Wordnik.com.  [The Heart of Mid-Lothian] Reference

Hogarth personated the spectre, but so unretentive -- (we are told) -- was his memory that though the speech consisted only of two lines he was unable to get them by heart, and his facetious associates wrote them on an illuminated lantern that he might read them when he came upon the stage.    From Wordnik.com.  [The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction Volume 14, No. 382, July 25, 1829] Reference

The old Danaïde only saw an opportunity for pouring another people into her ill-made and unretentive cask.    From Wordnik.com.  [The Roman Question] Reference

` ` It was nae sic thing, '' said Madge, whose unretentive memory let out, in the eagerness of contradiction, all that she would have most wished to keep concealed, had her judgment been equal to her inclination.    From Wordnik.com.  [The Heart of Mid-Lothian] Reference

We can understand the mood of which it is the utterance; the feeling of despair that sometimes comes over the most patient instructor when he finds that all his efforts to hammer some truth into, or to print some impression on, the brain or heart of man or boy, have been foiled, and that years, it may be, of patient work have scarcely left more traces on unretentive minds than remain on the ocean of the passage through it of a keel.    From Wordnik.com.  [Expositions of Holy Scripture St. Mark] Reference