archives

Noun

archive (plural archives)

1. A repository or other place for storing material (such as documents and records) no longer in current use, and usually having historical value.
   • The chiefeſt of the firſt Precinct vvas Lubeck, vvhere the Archives of their ancient Records, and their prime Chancery is ſtill, […]1632 October 29 (Gregorian calendar), James Howell, “III. To the Right Honourable the Earl R. from Hamburgh.”, in Epistolæ Ho-Elianæ. Familiar Letters Domestic and Forren. […], 3rd edition, volume I...
2. The material so stored, considered as a whole.
   • His archive of Old High German texts is the most extensive in Britain.
3. (broadly) A natural deposit of material, regarded as a record of environmental changes over time.
   • peat archive soil archive
4. (figuratively) A collection, a repository.
   • [T]heſe curious meddlers in collecting and gathering together on all ſides the errours, imperfections, defaults, and ſolæciſmes (as I may ſo ſay) not of verſes or Poemes, but of other mens lives, make of their memorie a moſt unpleaſant Archive or Regiſter, and uncivile Record, vvhich they ever...1603, Plutarch, “Of Cvriositie”, in Philemon Holland, transl., The Philosophie, Commonlie Called, The Morals […], London: […] Arnold Hatfield, →OCLC, page 140

See all 6 meanings of archive