archive

Pluralarchives

Formsarchives, archiving, archived

1. 1
   nouncountable

   A place where documents, records, and other media from the past are kept for their historical value.

   Like a library, but holding original records rather than published books.

   The national archive preserves government records dating back centuries.

   Researchers spent weeks combing through the museum's archive for forgotten correspondence.

   Similarrepository, registry

   Note

   The word reached English around 1603, in a translation by Philemon Holland, through French and Latin archīvum from Greek arkheîon, "town hall". It began, in other words, as the name of a building. What separates an archive from a library is what it holds. Thomas Lannon, speaking to James Somers in 2017, called it "the unpublished, the hard to find, the true story": the stories behind things.

2. 2
   verbtransitive

   To store a document or item by placing it into an archive for long-term keeping.

   Like filing a finished project away in long-term storage instead of leaving it on your desk.

   The company archives all customer contracts at the end of each year.

   Historians urged the council to archive the wartime letters before they deteriorated.

   Similarstore, file, preserve

3. 3
   nouncountable

   The whole body of documents and records preserved in an archive, considered together as a single collection.

   The newspaper's archive spans every issue printed since 1890.

   Much of the composer's archive was lost when the warehouse flooded.

   Similarcollection, records, papers

   Note

   Here the word names what is kept rather than where. A person or institution can own one, and an of-phrase names its contents: his archive of Old High German texts. Because the same word names the place of storage, context decides which is meant. An archive you visit is a place; an archive you inherit, catalog or lose is a collection.

4. 4
   nouncountable

   Natural deposits of material that act as a record of environmental changes over long periods of time.

   Ice cores form a natural archive of the atmosphere's past composition.

   Sediment at the bottom of the lake serves as an archive of centuries of pollen and ash.

   Similarrecord

   Note

   Ecologists borrow the record-keeper's word for deposits that keep time without anyone writing anything down. The usual pattern puts the material first: a soil archive, a peat archive, and likewise ice cores, lake sediment and tree rings. The scientist's work is to read these layers in order, reconstructing past climates and environments from what each one has preserved.

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