Other forms: libraries
A library is the building full of books you can borrow and take home for free. The date stamp inside the cover, the trolley of returns, the sign asking you to keep your voice down.
Your own collection counts as one too — a library of records, a library of old films on a shelf. In computing, a library is a bundle of ready-written code that other programs pull in instead of writing it again. The person who runs one is a librarian, and the card in your wallet is a library card. Here is the trap worth learning: a library lends, a bookshop sells. French librairie, Spanish librería and Italian libreria all mean the shop, so half of Europe reaches for library and lands on the wrong building.
1nounlibraryA building or room holding books that the public can read there or borrow.~83%
“The library is open until eight on Thursdays.”
2nounprivateA private collection of books, records, films or other material.~4%
“His music library filled two walls of the front room.”
synonyms: collection
3nouncomputingIn computing, a collection of ready-written code that other programs can use.~13%
“The app pulls its date handling from a small open-source library.”
Shares are an estimate: a language model read 24 sentences found in the wild and placed 24 of them on a sense — a count of our sample, not a measurement of English.
library is a building.
Library came through Middle English librarie and Anglo-Norman from Latin librarium, a bookcase or chest for books, from librarius, to do with books, from liber. And liber first meant the inner bark of a tree, the stuff people wrote on before paper — probably from a root *lewbʰ- meaning to strip or peel. It replaced the older English bochous, a book-house. In French, Spanish and Italian the same word slid sideways in the sixteenth century and ended up meaning the bookshop instead.
Proto-Indo-European
*lewbʰ- (cut off)
Latin
librarium — bookcase, chest for books
Old French
librairie
Anglo-Norman
librarie
Middle English
librarie
English, today
library
Built from
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 lewbʰ- (“to strip, to peel”). Displaced native bochous, from bōchūs (compare bookhouse). roa - 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.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA