Other forms: originals
Original means the very first one — the original plan, the original owner, the original building. It also means new and not copied: an original idea, highly original work.
Those two senses pull in opposite directions and only context separates them: the original design might be the earliest one or the inventive one. As a noun, the original is the thing a copy was made from: keep the original, send a copy. Note originality, which is the quality of being inventive, and originally, which means at first and is a very useful sentence opener for correcting an impression.
1adjectiveexistingExisting from the beginning; the first.
“The original windows were replaced in the sixties.”
2adjectiveoriginalNew and not copied from anybody.
“It is a genuinely original piece of work.”
3nouncopiesThe thing from which copies are made.
“Keep the original and send them a scan.”
Too few real examples of this word to estimate which sense is commonest.
original is a quality of being first or new.
Latin originalis comes from origo, a beginning or source — the same root as origin and orient, from a verb meaning to rise, as the sun does. The original is where something rose from.
Latin
orīginālis — primitive, original
Old French
original
Middle English
original
English, today
original
From Middle English original, from Old French original, from Latin orīginālis (“primitive, original”), from Latin orīgō (“beginning, source, origin”), equivalent to origin + -al; see origin.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA