library

English Online Dictionary. What means library‎? What does library mean?

English

Etymology

From Middle English librarie, from Anglo-Norman librarie, from Old French librairie, from Latin librarium (“bookcase, chest for books”), from librarius (“concerning books”), from liber (“the inner bark of trees; paper, parchment, book”), probably derived from a Proto-Indo-European base *leub(ʰ)- (“to strip, to peel”). Displaced native Middle English bochous, bokhus (literally “book house”), from Old English bōchūs (compare bookhouse).

Romance cognates often mean “bookshop” instead: French librairie, Italian libreria, Spanish librería, Romanian librărie and Portuguese livraria. This is a relatively recent innovation (16th century in French), which ended up displacing the earlier sense.

Pronunciation

• (UK) IPA^(key): /ˈlaɪbɹi/
  • (Received Pronunciation) IPA^(key): /ˈlaɪbɹəɹi/
• (US)
  • (General American) IPA^(key): /ˈlaɪˌbɹɛɹi/, /ˈlaɪbɹəɹi/
  • (nonstandard) IPA^(key): /ˈlaɪˌbɛɹi/, /ˈlaɪbəɹi/
• Rhymes: -aɪbɹi, -aɪbɹəɹi, -aɪbɛɹi

The non-RP UK pronunciation /ˈlaɪbɹi/ (whence the eye dialect spelling libry) exhibits haplology.

Noun

library (plural libraries)

2. An institution which holds books and/or other forms of media for use by the public or qualified people often lending them out, as well as providing various other services for its users.

   Synonym: (nonstandard) bookhouse

   Coordinate terms: bookshop, bookstore
3. (by extension) Any institution that lends out its goods for use by the public or a community.
4. A collection of books or other forms of stored information.
5. An equivalent collection of analogous information in a non-printed form, e.g. record library.
6. A room dedicated to storing books.
7. (programming) A collection of software routines that provide functionality to be incorporated into or used by a computer program.

   Coordinate term: framework
8. (genetics) A collection of DNA material from a single organism or relative to a single disease.
9. (card games, Magic: The Gathering) The deck or draw pile.

Synonyms

• bibliotheca (obsolete)
• bibliotheke (obsolete)

Derived terms

Descendants

• → Hindustani:
  • Hindi: लाइब्रेरी f (lāibrerī)
  • Urdu: لائبریری f (lāibrerī)
• → Iban: librari
• → Japanese: ライブラリー (raiburarī)
• → Korean: 라이브러리 (raibeureori)
• → Yoruba: láíbìrì

Translations

Further reading

• library on Wikipedia.Wikipedia
• library (computing) on Wikipedia.Wikipedia
• library (disambiguation) on Wikipedia.Wikipedia

Anagrams

• biraryl