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archives, a place where public records or other historical documents are kept.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
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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 Research and Collections Centre holds more than 6,000 books on Shakespeare as well as early modern literature and drama, alongside the theatre's own archive of past productions.
From BBC ● Oct. 11, 2026
For Barber, that evolutionary record offers a natural archive of biological experiments that could help researchers develop new medical tools.
From Science Daily ● Sep. 28, 2026
Inspired by the museum’s Soviet Hippie collection, an archive that documents the suppressed Soviet subculture of the 1960s through photos, clothing and memorabilia, the workshops use historical events as foundations for creative prompts.
From Los Angeles Times ● Sep. 28, 2026
One archive lists her as mulatto, or mixed race, though her white father was unnamed.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Sep. 26, 2026
At the archive in Fort Worth, I pulled records from the U.S.
From "Killers of the Flower Moon" by David Grann
Following the singer's death, research by staff at Conwy council's archives suggested Parton's ancestors were from Machynlleth, in Powys, not Conwy as previously thought.
From BBC ● Oct. 9, 2026
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
Prada has also begun digging through thousands of pieces in its archives, creating re-editions of looks from past collections for clients with a particular attachment to a show or period in the brand’s history.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Sep. 28, 2026
“Welcome, gentlemen, to the secret archives of the American Black Chamber!”
From "The Woman All Spies Fear" by Amy Butler Greenfield
Read archived story: It could take years for oil prices to return to $67 a barrel.
From MarketWatch ● Oct. 5, 2026
"This information is archived in the rocks, so, in order to study what happened, you have to study rocks."
From Science Daily ● Sep. 26, 2026
The GoFundMe made only $8,700, according to the archived page.
From Slate ● Sep. 22, 2026
“The fact that this is now archived and retrievable with metadata is amazing, because anybody doing research will now be able to access this information. It’s not just in my dad’s folder.”
From Los Angeles Times ● Jul. 23, 2026
Using one of the turncoat’s exploits, I performed a quick hack that caused my eargear and hab-unit cameras to display the archived video from my first night of indenturement instead of a live feed.
From "Ready Player One: A Novel" by Ernest Cline
Saving and archiving AI chat transcripts across platforms can create a searchable snapshot of a user’s work in progress and thinking process.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Sep. 9, 2026
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
Jerald “Coop” Cooper is an artist and founder of Hood Century, a media agency researching, archiving and educating the masses on Black folks lived experience with the city, via architecture, design and popular culture.
From Los Angeles Times ● Apr. 13, 2026
Several projects are currently under way in such areas as electronic document archiving and retrieval, bilingual/multilingual text alignment, computer-assisted translation, translation memory and terminology database management, and speech recognition.
From Multilingualism on the Web by Marie Lebert
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
