Hysteresis
Etymology
From Greek hysteresis, "a shortcoming, a coming late" (from hysteros, "later, coming after"). The physicist James Alfred Ewing introduced the term in 1881 for magnetic materials that lag behind the force applied to them and stay partly magnetized after it is removed. It now names any lagging, path-dependent behavior.
noun · /his-tuh-REE-sis/
A system’s dependence on its own history, so that its current state reflects the path it took, not just present conditions.
What it names
Why undoing the cause of a change often fails to undo the change — the situation remembers where it has been and does not simply snap back.
Example
Trust showed clear hysteresis: after the layoffs, restoring the old salaries did nothing to restore how safe people had felt before.
Related idea
Hysteresis is when reversing the cause fails to reverse the effect; equilibrium assumes the opposite — that a system settles by present conditions alone, regardless of its past.