archive
Americannoun
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archives
plural
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Usually archives. documents or records relating to the activities, business dealings, etc., of a person, family, corporation, association, community, or nation.
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archives, a place where public records or other historical documents are kept.
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any extensive record or collection of data.
The encyclopedia is an archive of world history. The experience was sealed in the archive of her memory.
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Digital Technology.
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a long-term storage device, as a disk or magnetic tape, or a computer directory or folder that contains copies of files for backup or future reference.
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a collection of digital data stored in this way.
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a computer file containing one or more compressed files.
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a collection of information permanently stored on the internet.
The magazine has its entire archive online, from 1923 to the present.
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verb (used with object)
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archives,
present (3rd person singular)
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archived,
past participle, past
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archiving
present participle
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to place or store in an archive.
to vote on archiving the city's historic documents.
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Digital Technology. to compress (computer files) and store them in a single file.
noun
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a collection of records of or about an institution, family, etc
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a place where such records are kept
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computing data transferred to a tape or disk for long-term storage rather than frequent use
verb
Other Word Forms
Derived Forms
Inflected Forms
Nouns
Participles
Conjugated Forms
Present
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archivesimple
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archivessimple
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have archivedperfect
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has archivedperfect
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am archivingprogressive
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are archivingprogressive
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is archivingprogressive
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have been archivingperfect progressive
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has been archivingperfect progressive
Past
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archivedsimple
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had archivedperfect
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was archivingprogressive
-
were archivingprogressive
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had been archivingperfect progressive
Future
Etymology
Origin of archive
First recorded in 1595–1605; originally, as plural, from French archives, from the Late Latin plural noun archīva, archīa “public records,” from Greek archeîa “public records,” plural of archeîon “town hall, public office,” equivalent to archḗ “magistracy, office” + -eion suffix of location
Explanation
An archive is a collection of older things — documents, books, movies, or something else — that's meant to preserve them. Archives tell us about history. An archive involves old stuff — specifically, a collection of old stuff, often put together by a librarian. Newspaper archives collect old newspapers, usually all copies of a paper from a certain date onward. There are movie and music archives. Most museums have many types of archives within them. And it's always a good idea to keep an archive of important files on your computer. When you put something in an archive, you're archiving it.
Vocabulary lists containing archive
Play by the Rules: Arch
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The View from Saturday
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arch
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Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
See Examples For:
The results of this analysis, as well as previously unseen archive material about the gem's history and theft, form part of the exhibition, according to the museum.
From BBC ● Oct. 17, 2026
The message from 1809 -- detailing French and allied troops' positions in two dozen lines of symbols, numbers and letters -- had lain ignored in an online academic archive.
From Barron's ● Oct. 16, 2026
But it’s also a show with a sound bite archive spanning decades which includes such hits as “Jane, you ignorant slut,” from a late-’70s “Weekend Update” sketch starring Dan Aykroyd and Jane Curtin.
From Salon ● Oct. 14, 2026
The house took eight years to build on the property where the couple’s previous home burned during the 2018 Woolsey fire, along with Albuquerque’s studio, archive and many of her paintings.
From Los Angeles Times ● Oct. 13, 2026
She was talking about the archive reference I’d written in my hand.
From "Code Name Verity" by Elizabeth Wein
From the Moneyist archives, here is Exhibit A: My sister squandered our parents’ millions, asked me to give her $10,000, then made me a tempting offer.
From MarketWatch ● Oct. 6, 2026
Mockingbird’s archives are on display at the Goethe-Institut Los Angeles, depicting a raucous era of music and defiance.
From Los Angeles Times ● Oct. 4, 2026
She started with her maternal grandmother and worked her way back through time using public archives in the Netherlands until she stumbled upon a painter she had never heard of: Jeremias Schultz.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Sep. 26, 2026
"We've made great strides, very positive for both countries," Trump told reporters as he had tea with Xi at the White House on Friday before the archives trip.
From Barron's ● Sep. 25, 2026
I also intended to donate to the archives my dozen long letters from old, Mr. Nettle.
From "Atonement" by Ian McEwan
Read archived story: It could take years for oil prices to return to $67 a barrel.
From MarketWatch ● Oct. 5, 2026
The post, archived by the Santa Barbara Independent, was captioned “meet the gc,” or group chat, and included a caption with several ninja emojis.
From Los Angeles Times ● Oct. 2, 2026
The GoFundMe made only $8,700, according to the archived page.
From Slate ● Sep. 22, 2026
In a study published September 16 in The Astrophysical Journal Letters, researchers led by Andrea Bernardi, a doctoral candidate at the Universidad Diego Portales in Chile, examined archived observations of seven young stars.
From Science Daily ● Sep. 17, 2026
I explained how I’d seen Jesse install operating systems, play online games from chess to Quake, use astonishing ingenuity to gather archived information off the Web.
From "Geeks: How Two Lost Boys Rode the Internet Out of Idaho" by Jon Katz
That sparked an outpouring of grief on social media, with users archiving chat histories and sharing last conversations.
From Barron's ● Jul. 15, 2026
The promotion is part of the brand’s partnership with StoryCorps, an independent nonprofit focused on archiving the stories of everyday people.
From Salon ● Apr. 27, 2026
They added it would work with relevant bodies "to ensure NHS Wales practices in tissue archiving and access to genomic testing remain in the best interests of our patients".
From BBC ● Jan. 6, 2026
Critics and digital subcultures embraced the niche volume like a manifesto — and a marker of Seu’s arrival as a public intellectual whose archiving was itself a form of activism.
From Los Angeles Times ● Nov. 20, 2025
By archiving the daily output, the translator helps in building an extensive translation memory and in solving a number of translation issues.
From The Internet and Languages [around the year 2000] by Marie Lebert
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