archetype
pronunciation
How to pronounce archetype in British English:
UK [ˈɑ:kitaɪp]
How to pronounce archetype in American English:
US [ˈɑrkɪˌtaɪp]
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- Noun:
- an original model on which something is patterned
Word Origin
- archetype
- archetype: [17] Archetype comes, via Latin archetypum, from Greek arkhétupon, a nominal use of the adjective arkhétupos, literally ‘firstmoulded’, from túpos ‘mould, model, type’. The Greek prefix arkhe- was based on the noun arkhos ‘chief, ruler’, a derivative of the verb arkhein ‘begin, rule’ (see ARCHIVES). It first entered our language (via Latin archi-) in the Old English period, as arce- (archbishop was an early compound formed with it); and it was reborrowed in the Middle English period from Old French arche-.Its use has gradually extended from ‘highest in status’ and ‘first of its kind’ to ‘the ultimate – and usually the worst – of its kind’, as in archcraitor. Its negative connotations lie behind its eventual development, in the 17th century, into an independent adjective, first as ‘cunning, crafty’, later as ‘saucy, mischievous’. The same Greek root has provided English with the suffixes -arch and -archy (as in monarch, oligarchy); but here the original meaning of ‘ruling’ has been preserved much more stably.=> archaic, archives
- archetype (n.)
- "original pattern from which copies are made," 1540s [Barnhart] or c. 1600 [OED], from Latin archetypum, from Greek arkhetypon "pattern, model, figure on a seal," neuter of adjective arkhetypos "first-moulded," from arkhe- "first" (see archon) + typos "model, type, blow, mark of a blow" (see type). Jungian psychology sense of "pervasive idea or image from the collective unconscious" is from 1919. Jung defined archetypal images as "forms or images of a collective nature which occur practically all over the earth as constituents of myths and at the same time as autochthonous individual products of unconscious origin." ["Psychology and Religion" 1937]
Example
- 1. Wheels are the archetype of a primitive , caveman-level technology .
- 2. A strong archetype can create an immediate and powerful emotional bond .
- 3. It is difficult to establish any archetype for failure from the past two years .
- 4. Yet scott 's account reveals her as another kind of familiar american archetype : she 's the girl who ran away .
- 5. Then , he tried to show that smurf society is the archetype of a totalitarian utopia marked by stalinism and nazism .