Archive

How to spell archive

7 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce archive

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does archive mean?

1. nounA collection of historical records or documents, or the place where they are kept.
2. verbTo move records or files into long-term storage for later reference.

Archive in a sentence

• noun

  The newspaper keeps every back issue in its archive.

• verb

  The software lets you archive old emails without deleting them.

• noun

  Researchers spent weeks in the national archive reading old letters.

• verb

  Staff routinely archive closed case files at the end of each year.

Where does archive come from?

Language of origin: Greek

The word traces back to the Greek arkheion, which meant the public office or town hall where official records were kept, and that in turn grew from arkhe, a word that carried the linked senses of 'beginning', 'rule', and 'government'. The Greek records office took its name from the seat of authority, since the people who governed were the people who kept the documents. The term passed into Latin as archivum or archium, meaning a written record or a place where such records were stored, and from there into French as the plural archives. English adopted it in the early 1600s, at first almost always in the plural form to describe a repository of historical documents. The hidden 'h' after the 'c', kept from the Greek spelling, is the main trap, and it survives in relatives such as 'architect' and 'archaeology', all sharing that same arkhe root.

How the word is built

• archi- (from Greek arkheion: public records office)
• -ive (noun/verb forming suffix)