library

Meaning

Noun

• An institution which holds books and/or other forms of media for use by the public or qualified people often lending them out, as well as providing various other services for its users.
• Any institution that lends out its goods for use by the public or a community.
• A collection of books or other forms of stored information.
• An equivalent collection of analogous information in a non-printed form, e.g. record library.
• A room dedicated to storing books.
• A collection of software routines that provide functionality to be incorporated into or used by a computer program.
• A collection of DNA material from a single organism or relative to a single disease.
• The deck or draw pile.

Related

Similar words

• bibliotheca
• bibliotheke

Origin

• Middle English librarie, from Anglo-Norman librarie, from Old French librairie, from Latin librarium ("bookcase, chest for books"), from librarius, from liber, probably derived from a Proto-Indo-European base *lewbʰ-. Displaced native , from .
• 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.