Herein the concept of scaled memory (SM) is proposed to describe hysteretic material behaviors. SM scales the nonlinear variation of tangential modulus during monotonic loadings into a piecewise linear distribution, which can easily be modified to simulate specific characteristics of material behavior during cyclic loadings. As an example, SM is applied to eliminate artificial ratchetting in bounding surface plasticity, and to produce closed stress-strain loops during cyclic loadings, without introducing a single material constant. SM is generalized to six dimensions in the particular case of pressure-independent materials, and is applied to simulate the hysteretic responses of metals.