archive

Meanings

1. 1
   noun

   a depository containing historical records and documents

   I looked in the archive for the files.

2. 2
   verb

   to put into an archive

   I archived the files.

3. 3
   noun

   a single file comprised of metadata and one or more other files, often compressed

   They extracted the archive on to disk.

4. 4
   noun

   A place for storing earlier, and often historical, material. An archive usually contains documents (letters, records, newspapers, etc.) or other types of media kept for historical interest.

   “I don’t know how one could be interested in libraries and not archives,” Lannon told me. They tell you “the stories behind things,” he said, “the unpublished, the hard to find, the true story.

5. 5
   noun

   The material so kept, considered as a whole (compare archives).

   His archive of Old High German texts is the most extensive in Britain.

6. 6
   noun

   Natural deposits of material, regarded as a record of environmental changes over time.

   soil archive

7. 7
   verb

   To place (something) into an archive.

   I was planning on archiving the documents from 2001.

Etymology

Etymology tree Ancient Greek ᾰ̓́ρχω (ắrkhō) Proto-Indo-European *-h₂ Proto-Indo-European *-éh₂ Ancient Greek -ᾱ (-ā) Ancient Greek -η (-ē) Ancient Greek ᾰ̓ρχή (ărkhḗ) Ancient Greek *ἀρχεῖος (*arkheîos) Ancient Greek ἀρχεῖον (arkheîon)bor. Latin archīvumbor. French archives French archiveder. English archive First appears c. 1603 in a translation by Philemon Holland. From French archive(s), from Latin archīvum, from Ancient Greek ἀρχεῖον (arkheîon, “town hall”).