Other forms: filed, files, filing
A file is one saved thing on a computer — a document, a photo, a song — with a name on it and a place you can find it again. You drag a file into a folder, attach a file to an email, and spend ten minutes hunting for the file you saved this morning.
Before computers a file was a cardboard folder of papers, and it still is: a patient's file, a file on a suspect, a cabinet of files nobody has opened since 1998. The verb goes two ways — you file papers away in order, and you file a complaint, a claim, a tax return, which is the formal sense you meet in offices and courts. Two other words share the spelling: a file is a metal tool with a rough face for rubbing an edge smooth, and to walk in single file is to walk one behind another. On a chessboard the files are the columns running up it and the ranks are the rows across.
1nounfileA document, photo or piece of data saved on a computer.~56%
“Save the file before you close the laptop.”
2noundossierA folder of papers kept together about one person or subject.~2%
“Her file was three inches thick.”
3verbputTo put a document where it belongs, or to submit one formally.~38%
“You must file your tax return by the end of January.”
4nounsmallA small metal tool with a rough surface, used to rub an edge smooth.~2%
“He took the sharp corner off the pipe with a file.”
5nounchessA column of squares running up the board.~2%
“The rook took the open file and the game was over.”
Shares are an estimate: a language model read 23 sentences found in the wild and placed 22 of them on a sense (1 were unclear) — a count of our sample, not a measurement of English.
The paper file is a thread. Latin fīlum meant thread, and French filer meant to spin it out — to arrange things one behind another, which is exactly what single file still describes. A file has always been things on a line. The metal file is a different word altogether: Old English fēol, a rasp.
Latin
fīlum — thread
Old French
fil — thread
English, today
file
From Old French fil (“thread”), from Latin fīlum (“thread”). a doublet of filum.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA