album
- 1A collection of recorded songs or pieces released together as one item, on a record or CD, or digitally for download or streaming.
The duo recorded their debut album in a rented cabin.
Listeners can buy the whole album or download single tracks from it.
UsageSongs are on an album; bands record or release one: released eight albums.
Note
The word outlived the disc. What the multi-track record named is now the release itself, so an album streams on Spotify as readily as it once spun on a turntable.
- 2A book specially made to hold photographs, stamps, or autographs.
Her grandmother kept every family portrait pasted into a worn album.
Serious philatelists mount their finds in acid-free albums.
UsageUsually named by what it holds: a photo album, a stamp album; pictures go in it.
Note
The blank tablet behind the Roman notice board survives here. Traditionally, people fill albums page by page with items they want to keep. Jonathan Freedland, writing in The Guardian in 2013, sets the family album beside the sealed love letter as an emblem of private keeping, with photographs of one's children stuck into a book rather than sprayed into the public ether.
- 3A set of digital photos or videos grouped together under a name of its own in a phone app, on a computer, or online.
He created a shared album in the photo app so everyone at the reunion could upload their pictures.
My phone sorts screenshots and selfies into separate albums without my asking.
Similarfolder
- 4A gathered collection of items, especially of literary works.
Similarcollection, anthology, compilation
Practice
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Origin
Its source is albus ("white"), which gave Latin album, a "blank white writing tablet"; English borrowed that word.