microfilm
Americannoun
-
microfilms
plural
verb (used with object)
-
microfilms,
present (3rd person singular)
-
microfilmed,
past participle, past
-
microfilming
present participle
noun
verb
Other Word Forms
Derived Forms
Inflected Forms
Nouns
Participles
Conjugated Forms
Present
-
microfilmsimple
-
microfilmssimple
-
have microfilmedperfect
-
has microfilmedperfect
-
am microfilmingprogressive
-
are microfilmingprogressive
-
is microfilmingprogressive
-
have been microfilmingperfect progressive
-
has been microfilmingperfect progressive
Past
-
microfilmedsimple
-
had microfilmedperfect
-
was microfilmingprogressive
-
were microfilmingprogressive
-
had been microfilmingperfect progressive
Future
Etymology
Origin of microfilm
Explanation
Microfilm is a miniature photographic reproduction of a document. If you're looking for very old newspapers in the library, you'll probably find them stored on microfilm. Microfilm is exactly what it sounds like: small film. These tiny photographs have to be looked at through a special viewer that magnifies them, but because they're so small, many print documents can fit on one reel of film. Microfilm is a great way for libraries to store many documents in a small space. Even the advent of the internet hasn't made microfilm obsolete — it's still a great way to preserve documents.
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 records, seized by American troops after the Nazis were defeated in World War II, had previously only been available on microfilm.
From Barron's ● Jun. 5, 2026
Thanks to “Cosmic Music,” anyone interested in her life and work doesn’t have to go comb through microfilm or ancient magazines to learn more about this unbelievably accomplished and completely fascinating human being.
From Salon ● Apr. 14, 2026
“I go to the New York State Library, and I’m able to look on microfilm at the papers of Franklin Roosevelt as governor,” Burgess told me.
From Slate ● Nov. 3, 2025
Artist David Hartt designed the show to include prints, mural-size blow-ups, 35mm color slides, microfilm, video clips, magazines, newspapers, and specially commissioned artistic photo albums.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Sep. 27, 2025
He handed back the rolls of microfilm and asked the librarian, “Do you know the address of the Institute of Archaeology, please?”
From "The Subtle Knife" by Philip Pullman
Yiddish professors like Kirzane and Anita Norich, who translated “A Jewish Refugee in New York,” by Kadya Molodovsky, have discovered works by scrolling through microfilms of long-extinct Yiddish newspapers and periodicals that serialized the novels.
From New York Times ● Feb. 6, 2022
Researchers found the information in historical documents and microfilms at the Connecticut State Library, among other sources like Ancestry.com and digitized newspapers.
From Washington Times ● Sep. 10, 2019
I’ve spent many enjoyable afternoons at the court archives in Chicago, combing through the microfilms indexes and trying to find lawsuits that involved Holmes.
From Salon ● Apr. 22, 2019
After hours scouring Cyrillic microfilms on outmoded computers in the public archives, we found my family’s records.
From New York Times ● Sep. 18, 2017
I spent the evening at the public library looking at microfilms of the El Paso Times.
From "Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe" by Benjamin Alire Saenz
A volunteer in the 1990s, Robert E. Denney, was unbundling Civil War service records to be microfilmed when he saw an opportunity with a curio that had outlasted its usefulness.
From Washington Post ● Jan. 16, 2023
The collection includes more than 4,600 English- and Japanese-language issues published in 13 camps and later microfilmed by the Library.
From Textbooks ● Dec. 21, 2021
According to the Postal Museum, V-Mail microfilmed specially designed letter sheets.
From Seattle Times ● Jun. 2, 2019
Like many good reporters, McBride took off on a “slight,” if time-consuming, tangent — spending day after day poring over reels of microfilmed documents related to the FBI and the JFK assassination.
From Salon ● Dec. 8, 2018
Union Catalogue—During the year 26,033 new titles were added including 2,928 from the microfilmed record of library catalogues.
From Report of the National Library Service for the Year Ended 31 March 1958 by New Zealand. National Library Service
The ark story when I was a kid, they probably would have been feverishly microfilming encyclopedias and phone books and stuff.
From Slate ● May 26, 2015
The landmark 1976 bill set rules governing radio, television, photocopying, tape recording, microfilming and computer storage, breaking a 15-year logjam on a subject that bored most lawmakers.
From New York Times ● Mar. 20, 2015
After that raid, Solzhenitsyn began microfilming all his work and arranging for its underground transmission abroad for safekeeping.
From Time Magazine Archive
With his bonanza money, he hired a photographer and a musicologist, sent them up & down Austria, Germany and Hungary collecting and microfilming Haydn manuscripts.
From Time Magazine Archive
By the end of the Workshop, SPERBERG-McQUEEN confessed to having been converted to a limited extent to the view that electronic images constitute a promising alternative to microfilming; indeed, an alternative probably superior to microfilming.
From Library of Congress Workshop on Etexts by Library of Congress
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.
