Other forms: folders
A folder is the stiff card or plastic cover you keep loose papers in, so they stay together and stay flat. The one in your bag with the homework in it; the cardboard one on a desk with a name written on the tab.
On a computer a folder is the same idea with no card: a named place that holds files, sitting inside other folders, and drawn on screen as a little yellow folder to prove the point. You put papers IN a folder and you create a folder. A ring binder holds paper on metal rings and is not a folder. Watch one small trap: in British English a file can be the folder itself, while a file on a computer is what goes inside it.
1nounfolderA folded cover of card or plastic for holding loose papers.~43%
“He pulled a green folder out of his bag and opened it.”
2nouncomputerOn a computer, a named place that holds files.~57%
“Save the photos in a new folder on the desktop.”
Shares are an estimate: a language model read 14 sentences found in the wild and placed 14 of them on a sense — a count of our sample, not a measurement of English.
folder is a container for papers.
Folder is fold plus -er: the thing that folds, or the thing made by folding. English builds hundreds of words this way — opener, holder, cutter — and this one is so plain that nobody thinks about the fold any more. Every paper folder is still a piece of card bent once down the middle.
Proto-Indo-European
*pel- — to fold
Proto-Germanic
*falþaną — to fold
Proto-West Germanic
*falþan
Old English
fealdan
Middle English
folden
English
fold
English, today
folder
From fold + -er. fold The verb is from Middle English folden, from Old English fealdan, from Proto-West Germanic falþan, from Proto-Germanic falþaną (“to fold”), from Proto-Indo-European pel- (“to fold”). Cognate with Dutch vouwen, German falten. The noun is from Middle English folde, falde, itself derived from the verb.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA