Folder

How to spell folder

6 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce folder

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does folder mean?

1. nounA folded cover or wallet, usually of card, used to hold and organise loose papers.
2. nounAn on-screen container on a computer used to group and store related files.

Folder in a sentence

• She kept the signed contracts in a blue folder on her desk.

• Save the report in the shared folder so the whole team can open it.

• Each new client gets a labelled folder for their paperwork.

• She created a new folder on the desktop for last year's invoices.

Where does folder come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

The word folder is built from the everyday verb fold, which comes from the Old English faldan or fealdan, meaning 'to bend something over on itself' or 'to lay one part across another'. That verb has deep Germanic roots and is related to similar words in Dutch and German for folding cloth or paper. The noun-forming suffix -er, also Germanic, was added to mean 'a thing that folds' or 'a thing for holding folded papers', and the office sense of a stiff cover that folds around documents took hold in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries as paperwork grew. In the computer age the same word was borrowed as a natural metaphor for an on-screen container that stores files, keeping the filing-cabinet imagery alive. The spelling is wholly regular and phonetic, so the only real trap is remembering it ends in the plain -er rather than any fancier ending.

How the word is built

• fold (to bend over on itself)
• -er (noun suffix: thing that does or holds)