from
The Collaborative International Dictionary of English v.0.48
Archive \Ar"chive\, n.; pl. {Archives}. [F. archives, pl., L.
archivum, archium, fr. Gr. ? government house, ? ? archives,
fr. ? the first place, government. See {Archi-}, pref.]
1. pl. The place in which public records or historic
documents are kept.
[1913 Webster]
Our words . . . . become records in God's court, and
are laid up in his archives as witnesses. --Gov. of
Tongue.
[1913 Webster]
2. pl. Public records or documents preserved as evidence of
facts; as, the archives of a country or family.
[1913 Webster] [Rarely used in sing.]
[1913 Webster]
Some rotten archive, rummaged out of some seldom
explored press. --Lamb.
[1913 Webster]
Syn: Registers; records; chronicles.
[1913 Webster]
from
The Free On-line Dictionary of Computing (8 July 2008)
archive
1. <file format> A single file containing one or (usually)
more separate files plus information to allow them to be
extracted (separated) by a suitable program.
Archives are usually created for software distribution or
{backup}. {tar} is a common format for {Unix} archives, and
{arc} or {PKZIP} for {MS-DOS} and {Microsoft Windows}.
2. <operating system> To transfer files to slower, cheaper
media (usually {magnetic tape}) to free the {hard disk} space
they occupied. This is now normally done for long-term
storage but in the 1960s, when disk was much more expensive,
files were often shuffled regularly between disk and tape.
3. <networking> {archive site}.
(1996-12-08)