archetypes

Noun

archetype (plural archetypes)

1. An original model of which all other similar concepts, objects, or persons are merely copied, derivative, emulated, or patterned.
   • Near-synonym: prototype (sometimes synonymous)

   Synonyms:

   prototype

2. An ideal example of something; a quintessence.
   • The Bishop [of Gloucester, William Warburton] asserts there is no Archetype, because eloquence is a variable thing, depending on custom and fashion; […] there is no Archetype in nature of perfect eloquence; its very constituent parts, as they are deemed, having no substance or reality in them.1811, Richard Hurd, “A Letter to the Rev. Dr. Thomas Leland, […]”, in The Works of Richard Hurd, D.D. Lord Bishop of Worcester. In Eight Volumes, volume VIII, London: Printed for T[homas] Cadell and...
3. A character, object, or story that is based on a known character, object, or story.
   • Archetypes are figures and creatures that inhabit the pools of the world's mythology, folk tales, epics, and ballads. […] Thus archetypes are universal essences that we all recognize: the Mother, the Lover, the Trickster, the Spiritual and Temporal Leader, the Devil.2009, Janet B. Rodgers, Frankie Armstrong, “Introduction: Acting and Singing with Archetypes: Tapping into Creative Potential”, in Acting and Singing with Archetypes, Milwaukee, Wis.: Limelight...
4. According to Swiss psychologist Carl Jung: a universal pattern of thought, present in an individual's unconscious, inherited from the past collective experience of humanity.
   • The three archetypes so far discussed—the shadow, the anima, and the wise old man—are of a kind that can be directly experienced in personified form. In the foregoing I tried to indicate the general psychological conditions in which such an experience arises. But what I conveyed were only abstract...1968, C[arl] G[ustav] Jung, “Archetypes of the Collective Unconscious”, in R[ichard] F[rancis] C[arrington] Hull, transl., The Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious (Bollingen Series; XX), 2nd...
5. A protograph (“original manuscript of a text from which all further copies derive”).
   • The outstanding importance of this manuscript for the text of Aeschylus has long been recognized. In the last century some scholars even persuaded themselves that it was the archetype of the whole extant tradition.1990, Martin L[itchfield] West, “Manuscripts”, in Ernst Heitsch, Ludwig Koenen, Reinhold Merkelbach, Clemens Zintzen, editors, Studies in Aeschylus (Beiträge zur Altertumskunde [Contributions to...

See all 6 meanings of archetype