archetypal

UK/ˈɑːkɪtaɪpəl/US/ˈɑɹkɪtaɪpəl/

adjectiveC2Rare in speech; mostly a word you read · #13,417 of 15,258leans writtenformal · an editor’s judgement

Archetypal means being the original pattern that everything else follows. The definitive version of a type.

It is used to mean both the first example and the most typical one, which is a slight muddle the word has never resolved. So describing somebody as the archetypal English eccentric means they are the purest example rather than the earliest. Psychology gave it particular weight, since Jung used archetype for the basic figures he thought recurred across all human storytelling. The noun archetype is commoner than the adjective.

Definitions of archetypal

1adjectivearchetypalBeing the original or most typical example of a kind.C2
“He is the archetypal village doctor.”

Where it comes from

Proto-Indo-European
*h₂ergʰ- — to begin; to command, rule
Ancient Greek
ἀρχέτυπον — model, pattern
Latin
archetypum — original
Old French
architipe
English
archetype
English, today
archetypal

Built from

ἀρχέτυπος · Ancient Greek — first-moulded
ἀρχή · Ancient Greek — beginning, origin
ἄρχω · Ancient Greek — to begin; to lead, rule
τῠ́πος · Ancient Greek — blow, pressing; sort, type

From archetype + -al. archetype comes from Old French architipe (modern French archétype), from Latin archetypum (“original”), from Ancient Greek ἀρχέτυπον (“model, pattern”), the neuter form of ἀρχέτυπος (“first-moulded”), from ἀρχή (“beginning, origin”) (from ἄρχω (“to begin; to lead, rule”), from Proto-Indo-European h₂ergʰ- (“to begin; to command, rule”)) + τῠ́πος (“blow, pressing; sort, type”) (from τύπτω (“to beat, strike”), from Proto-Indo-European (s)tewp- (“to push; to stick”)).

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA

Practised in A Man Called Ove

First appears in chapter 37 of A Man Called Ove.

Practise this word

archetypal in the wild

In late 19th and early 20th century scholarship of religion, Adonis was widely seen as a prime example of the archetypal dying-and-rising god.
Adonis
The term has also been used to mean Pantheism in the classical Greek and Roman era, or archetypal pantheism as variously defined by different authors.
Classical pantheism
Hillman reports that archetypal psychology emerged partly from the Jungian tradition whilst drawing also from other traditions and authorities such as Henry Corbin, Giambattista Vico, and Plotinus.
Archetypal psychology
The archetypal tote bag is made of sturdy cloth, perhaps with thick leather at its handles or bottom; leather versions often have a pebbled surface.
Tote bag
At 3.6 GPa, Na3As adopts the Li3Bi structure, which is another archetypal structure.
Sodium arsenide

From Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. These sentences were written by other people about their own subjects; they are here to show the word at work, not as anybody’s opinion.

Related words

the architipe family

archetypal archetype

archetypal — used about once every 23,598 pages · #13,417 · point at the bar for the others

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