library means 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. It carries an Arena rating of 1424, earned across 3 head-to-head judged battles.
Among words judged in Lexicurio's Arena, library ranks #882 of 17,123 for Most Malleable Words, #1,207 of 17,130 for Best Fossil-Poetry Words, #6,123 of 17,113 for Most Elegant Words, #6,776 of 17,116 for Words That Escaped Their Books.
library is pronounced /ˈlaɪ.bɹi/.
Why “library” is a great word
A collection or institution providing books, media, or other informational materials for use, typically through lending. 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 from Proto-Indo-European *leub(ʰ)- ("to strip, to peel"). Unlike an archive, which guards documents for preservation, or a bookshop, which exists for commercial transaction, a library is a civic space dedicated to shared, temporary access. It is the particular scent of aged paper, the soft percussion of a date-stamp, and the hushed, democratic silence under fluorescent lights—a monument not to ownership, but to the communal mind, where stories are merely borrowed, never finally kept.
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.
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.e.g.“She went to exchange her books at her local library.”
- Any institution that lends out its goods for use by the public or a community.e.g.“You can check out a bandsaw from the tool library.”
- A collection of books or other forms of stored information.e.g.“A small library of books has been written on the subject.”
- A collection of information or reference materials not in book form.e.g.“She has the most impressive record library I've ever seen.”
- A room dedicated to storing books.
- A collection of software routines that provide functionality to be incorporated into or used by a computer program.e.g.“A static library is much like any other library in that it contains a bunch of code for your application to use.”
- A collection of DNA material from a single organism or relative to a single disease.
- The deck or draw pile.