Definition
nounAn 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.
nounAny institution that lends out its goods for use by the public or a community.
Sentence Examples
Tomorrow, I'm going to study at the library.
You may make use of his library.
The books in the library are classified according to subject.
Word Origin & History
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.
Literary Quotations & Historical Citations
"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[.]"
— 1981, William Irwin Thompson, The Time Falling Bodies Take to Light:Mythology, Sexuality and the Origins of Culture, page 11:
"When all else fails, give up and go to the library."
— 2012, Stephen King, 11/22/63, page 133:
"A small library of books has been written on the subject."
— 1896, Alfred Newton, A Dictionary of Birds, page 71:
"My library is not a single beast but a composite of many others, a fantastic animal made up of the several libraries built and then abandoned, over and over again, throughout my life. I can’t remember a time in which I didn’t have a library of some sort. The present one is a sort of multilayered autobiography, each book holding the moment in which I opened it for the first time."
— 2008 May 15, Alberto Manguel, “A 30,000-Volume Window on the World”, in New York Times:
"At his office in Copenhagen's Amager neighborhood, Thulstrup maintains a vast materials library, arranging samples and mock-ups on tables as tactile mood boards."
— 2026 May 26, Sam Cochran, “Feeling Zen”, in Architectural Digest, volume 83, number 4, page 100: