Mind & EmotionGreek → English
Archetype
/ˈɑːrkɪtaɪp/noun
The original model that later examples copy, or a recurring character type that everyone recognises.
The Greek roots
ἀρχή
archḗ
beginning, first
τύπος
týpos
stamp, impression, model
Literally: “first-struck pattern”
The story of the word
τύπος is the blow of a die and the mark the blow leaves, so an archetype is the master impression every copy is struck from, which is how English used the word from the 1540s. Jung took it over in the 1910s for inherited images he believed surfaced in the dreams of people who had never met: the shadow, the mother, the trickster. That borrowed sense is now the one most readers meet first.
- How it travelled
- Ancient Greek → Latin → English
- First recorded
- 1540s
Same family
typetypicalprototypearchaic
In a sentence
The grumpy mentor is an archetype, not a character.
Every founder profile is written to the same archetype.