1. by heart - Adverb
2. by heart - Phrase
by committing to memory
Source: WordNetA poem is learned by heart and then not again repeated. We will suppose that after a half year it has been forgotten: no effort of recollection is able to call it back again into consciousness. Hermann Ebbinghaus
The relation of repetitions for learning and for repeating English stanzas needs no amplification. These were learned by heart on the first day with less than half of the repetitions necessary for the shortest of the syllable series. Hermann Ebbinghaus
I shall enter on no encomium upon Massachusetts she needs none. There she is. Behold her, and judge for yourselves. There is her history the world knows it by heart. The past, at least, is secure. There is Boston and Concord and Lexington and Bunker Hill and there they will remain forever. Daniel Webster
The private reader of listener can become an executant of felt meaning when he learns the poem or the musical passage by heart. To learn by heart is to afford the text or music an indwelling clarity and life-force. George Steiner
He who cannot work out his salvation by heart will not do it by book. French Proverb
A boy living near a buddhist temple can learn an untaught sutra by heart. Japanese Proverb