library
/ˈlaɪˌbɹɛɹ.i/
Word Rarity
Uncommon
Frequency: Zipf frequency 4.86 in modern English
12
Scrabble Score
7
Letters
3
Syllables
6
Unique Chars
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.
noun
A collection of books or other forms of stored information.
noun
A collection of information or reference materials not in book form.
noun
A collection of software routines that provide functionality to be incorporated into or used by a computer program.
Example Sentences
- "She went to exchange her books at her local library."
- "Libraries have been burnt and whole religious movements wiped out because their belief and myths have been considered to be of dubious origin by the upholders of orthodoxy[.]"
- "When all else fails, give up and go to the library."
- "You can check out a bandsaw from the tool library."
- "[…] bike library where, as of 2016, there had been 275 check-outs per bike per year between 2010 and 2016. According to the librarians, the bikes are constantly in use during periods of good weather (Vilelle 2017)."
- "A small library of books has been written on the subject."
Etymology
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 *leub(ʰ)- (“to strip, to peel”). Displaced native Middle English bochous, bokhus (literally “book house”), from Old English bōchūs (compare bookhouse). Romance 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.
Origin
Word Breakdown
Regional Pronunciation
- American English: /ˈlaɪˌbɹɛɹ.i/
- British English: /ˈlaɪ.bɹi/