Politics & SocietyGreek → English
Archive
/ˈɑːrkaɪv/noun
A collection of documents kept for the record, or the place that holds it.
The Greek roots
ἀρχεῖον
arkheîon
magistrates' house, record office
Literally: “the house of the magistrates”
Follow a root:ἀρχεῖον1 word
The story of the word
The arkheîon was the building where the archons worked and where the city's documents were kept, so the word tied records to power from the beginning. Latin archivum and French archives passed it on, and English took it in the early 1600s in the plural; the singular archive is a back-formation and the verb is younger still, made ordinary by computing. Arkhḗ means both beginning and rule, which is how monarchy, anarchy and archaeology end up sharing a root with the filing cabinet.
- How it travelled
- Ancient Greek → Latin → French → English
- First recorded
- 17th century
The same roots elsewhere
Other languages reached for exactly the same Greek pieces.
Same family
archaicmonarchyanarchyarchon
In a sentence
The county archive holds every parish register back to 1538.