archive
noun · verb
Simple meaning
A place for storing earlier, and often historical.
Pronunciation
Say it like this:
ahrkyvSay the bold part a little louder.
IPA pronunciation (US)
ˈɑɹkaɪv
This word is pronounced essentially the same in American and British English, so one transcription covers both.
IPA (International Phonetic Alphabet) is a standard way of writing speech sounds.
Definition
Everyday modern meanings first, grouped by part of speech.
noun
A place for storing earlier, and often historical, material. An archive usually contains documents (letters, records, newspapers, etc.) or other types of media kept for historical interest.
The material so kept, considered as a whole.
verb
Put into an archive
transitive
To place (something) into an archive.
Word Aura™
How this word commonly comes across.
Aura for this meaning
This meaning: A place for storing earlier, and often historical, material. An archive usually contains documents (letters, records, newspapers, etc.) or other types of media kept for historical interest.
Used this way, archive is a reasonably familiar word that usually carries little praise or criticism of its own. It turns up most in historical writing contexts.
- Emotional tone
- Neutral
- Formality
- Neutral
- Intensity
- Not strongly marked
- How common
- Moderately common
- Connotation
- Matter-of-fact
- Usage feel
- Neutral and straightforward
Where it naturally appears
- Historical writing
Word Aura describes common impressions, not a measurement. Tone changes with sentence, speaker, relationship and situation.
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Dictionary data from Wiktionary via the Free Dictionary API. Simple meanings, combinations and word intelligence are built from verified reference data, no AI is used to load this page.