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archives, a place where public records or other historical documents are kept.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 Shroud represents a rich archive of genetic information that has accumulated over centuries of human interaction and environmental exposure.
From Science Daily ● Aug. 4, 2026
When a gay American man arrives to archive her art collection, he’s pulled along by a romance and a deeper mystery at the villa.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Jul. 26, 2026
Meta joined the pledge in 2016 according to a Wayback Machine archive of RE100's website.
From Barron's ● Jul. 25, 2026
The national archive for the Welsh historic environment has released photographs of Driver's discoveries following flights from Haverfordwest and Caernarfon airport in June and July.
From BBC ● Jul. 24, 2026
Between the overcrowding of furniture, and the archive she and Clara had in the other room, the entire theater would go up like a tinderbox if he tried.
From "Night Owls" by A.R. Vishny
Elsewhere, the paper reports on "Iconic Diana dresses revealed among palace archives", embedding a photo of the late Princess of Wales.
From BBC ● Aug. 15, 2026
Once we had those clues, we were able to search online archives of leaked computer data and unearth a much larger trove of information on the operation.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Aug. 14, 2026
Sound advice for a struggling new parent: Slate’s advice columnists have heard it all over the years, so our parenting advice column has been bringing back some classics from the archives.
From Slate ● Aug. 4, 2026
“Ever since the mural was put up, I look at it out of pure joy,” Leventhal, a senior director at the USC Shoah Foundation, which archives testimonies of Holocaust survivors, told the Times.
From Los Angeles Times ● Jul. 31, 2026
I crank up Spotify and log onto my art Tumblr, scrolling through my archives.
From "Leah on the Offbeat" by Becky Albertalli
The expedition used the remotely operated vehicle Hercules, which recorded extensive video footage that was later archived for public access and annotated by researchers at UH Mānoa.
From Science Daily ● Jul. 8, 2026
A State Department spokesperson said all bilateral relations fact sheets were archived and removed because most hadn’t been updated in more than two years, leaving them potentially outdated or inaccurate.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Mar. 26, 2026
Luhrmann didn’t end up using the archived material in “Elvis.”
From Los Angeles Times ● Feb. 24, 2026
AFP has archived these files and tracked evolutions in these categories from the very first days of the conflict.
From Barron's ● Feb. 24, 2026
I later found, amid the thousands of pages of records on the murders archived by the Bureau of Investigation, two other references to Burt.
From "Killers of the Flower Moon" by David Grann
When I started studying this and archiving it for my book, I was really focused on the more mainstream establishment media.
From Salon ● Jan. 20, 2026
Sanborn has acknowledged his error in archiving the crucial information -- but he downplayed the discovery.
From Barron's ● Nov. 19, 2025
Through the Electronic Babylonian Library Platform, Jiménez and his team are digitally archiving all known cuneiform fragments from around the world.
From Science Daily ● Nov. 11, 2025
Meanwhile, the Instagram page, Museum of Kashmir, is taking a broader approach to archiving.
From BBC ● Sep. 12, 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
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.
