archival

Meanings

1. 1
   adj

   Of or pertaining to an archive or archiving.

   In archival photographs, these lost structures appear almost futuristic (even today) in the way they carried trains across deep ravines on slender, balanced combinations of wrought and cast iron.

2. 2
   adj

   Of a material: having a quality suited to the conservational needs of archiving.

   archival boxes    archival paper

3. 3
   noun

   The practice of storing items in an archive; archiving; (countable) an instance of this.

   Our nightly computer backups include the archival of old e-mail messages.

4. 4
   adj

   of or relating to or contained in or serving as an archive

Etymology

The adjective is derived from archive (“place for storing earlier, and often historical, material; material so kept, considered as a whole”, noun) + -al (suffix meaning ‘of or pertaining to’ forming adjectives). The noun is derived from archive (“to put (something) in an archive”, verb) + -al (suffix forming nouns, especially of verbal action).