folder

American  

[fohl-der] / ˈfoʊl dər /

noun

• folders
  plural

1. a person or thing that folds.

2. a printed sheet, as a circular or timetable, folded into a number of usually pagelike sections.

3. a folded sheet of light cardboard used to cover or hold papers, letters, etc., as in a file.

4. Computers. directory.

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folder British  

/ ˈfəʊldə /

noun

1. a binder or file for holding loose papers, etc

2. a folded circular

3. a machine for folding printed sheets

4. a person or thing that folds

5. computing another name for directory

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Other Word Forms

Noun Inflected Forms

• folders
  plural

Etymology

Origin of folder

First recorded in 1545–55; fold ¹ + -er ¹

Example Sentences

See Examples For:

folder folders

So she set up a “deals” folder and routed all the promotions out of her inbox.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Aug. 7, 2026

Most airlines have an app you can download in advance to receive alerts and it's also worth checking you're signed up to get texts and that emails don't go into your junk folder.

From BBC ● Jul. 5, 2026

Clutching under his arm a blue folder stuffed with documents, maps, and cadastral surveys, Balliu said he has been threatened several times for trying to assert his rights.

From Barron's ● Jun. 25, 2026

A simple way to imagine this is like making two photocopies of a document but accidentally placing both copies into the same folder instead of separating them.

From Science Daily ● May 25, 2026

I stop and throw my homework folder, container of tahari rice, and water bottle into my backpack.

From "A Place at the Table" by Saadia Faruqi and Laura Shovan

A July trip to Target to get everything on her list — among the items, two packs of wired headphones, Band-Aids, eight folders and four composition notebooks — cost about $230.

From Salon ● Aug. 18, 2026

The target folders ensured that agents apprehended the correct person.

From Los Angeles Times ● Jul. 29, 2026

The lawsuit claims that Liu did not return an Apple-issued work laptop and exploited a “rare, previously unknown” bug to access Apple’s shared network folders while employed at OpenAI.

From MarketWatch ● Jul. 10, 2026

They all had access to the master “Toy Story 2” drive and it was easy to move between their personal folders and that central server—too easy, as it turned out.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Jun. 20, 2026

Beneath his fingers was everything he had ever wanted to know, all neatly packaged and labeled in sets of digital folders.

From "Boy 2.0" by Tracey Baptiste

Related Words

• binder
• file
• pocket