library
Plurallibraries
- 1A place where people can read or borrow books, movies, and other things.
Like a place where everyone in town can borrow books to read at home, then bring them back.
Our town library has thousands of books you can borrow for free.
She returned the library books a day late.
UsageYou borrow books from a library and buy them at a bookstore.
- 2A group of books, recordings, films, or other information that someone has collected and keeps.
Like a stamp collection, but made of books and other information.
He has a huge library of comic books in his bedroom.
Her music library fills three shelves with old records.
UsageSay a library of films or my music library.
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Note
- 3A room in a home or building used for keeping and reading books.
Like a kitchen, but it is for reading books instead of cooking food.
Grandfather reads in his library every evening after dinner.
The old house had a quiet library lined with wooden shelves.
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- 4A set of ready-made code that programmers can add to their own programs.
Like a box of building blocks you can drop into your own project instead of making each one.
This library lets you draw charts without writing all the code yourself.
The team added a free library to handle dates and times.
Note
Less common meanings
- 5A place that lends out useful things to people, not just books.
Like borrowing a neighbor's ladder, but from a place set up to lend things to everyone.
Our town's tool library lets you borrow a drill for a week.
The toy library lets families borrow puzzles for a week.
UsageOften tool library or toy library.
- 6A stored set of copied DNA pieces taken from a living thing, a body part, or a soil or water sample.
- 7In the card game Magic, the pile of cards a player draws from.
Practice
Can you tell the meanings of library apart? Answer 3 quick questions from this page, or write your own sentence and AI will check it.
Origin
It comes from Latin librarium, meaning a bookcase or chest for books, from liber, which meant book (originally the inner bark of trees used for writing).
Checked 31 Oct 2026 · 4 facts
- Library derives from Latin librarium, meaning a bookcase or chest for books. en.wiktionary.org
- Librarium derives from liber, meaning book. en.wiktionary.org
- Liber originally meant tree bark used for writing. logeion.org
- Liber denotes specifically the inner bark of a tree. logeion.org