archetype

Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day

Merriam-Webster

Arts, Literature, Language Courses, Education

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🗓️ 27 March 2025

⏱️ 2 minutes

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Summary

Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day for March 27, 2025 is:

archetype • \AHR-kih-type\ • noun

Archetype refers to someone or something that is seen to be a perfect example. It is also a word for the original pattern or model of which all things of the same type are representations or copies.

// The college’s most popular philosophy professor is the archetype of the preoccupied academic, complete with the messy desk, disheveled hair, and brilliant theories.

// The film is considered a sci-fi archetype for its pioneering use of special effects and prosthetics to depict an alien world.

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Examples:

“One of the most notable features of folktales, fairy tales, myths, and legends are their simplicity. These stories, many of them passed down to us across generations, are compelling because of the recognizable archetypes they incorporate (the evil stepmother, the dutiful daughter, the greedy king, etc.), their straightforward moral arcs, and their use of magic and transformation as catalysts for the plot.” — Gina Chung, LitHub.com, 13 Mar. 2024

Did you know?

In her 2024 book Doppelganger: A Trip into the Mirror World, author Naomi Klein writes that “the doppelganger archetype has appeared across time to explore issues of life and death, the body versus the soul, the ego versus the id …” Klein doesn’t mean that the same double, evil twin, or changeling keeps popping up throughout history, of course, but that the original concept of a doppelganger has served as a pattern, model, or template for writers to use in different ways, each supplying it with their own imagined details. Archetype’s origins are in two Greek words: the verb archein, meaning “to begin,” and the noun typos, meaning “type.” Since its debut in English in the mid-1500s, archetype has taken on uses specific to the ideas of Plato, John Locke, and Carl Jung, but in everyday prose, archetype is most commonly used to mean “a perfect example,” as in “Robert Louis Stevenson’s The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde is considered an archetype of doppelganger fiction.”

Transcript

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0:00.0	It's the Word of the Day for March 27th.
0:07.0	Today's word is archetype, spelled A-R-C-H-E-T-Y-P-E.
0:18.0	Arctype is a noun. It refers to someone or something that is seen to be a perfect example.
0:23.6	It's also a word for the original pattern or model of which all things of the same type are
0:29.5	representations or copies. Here's the word used in a sentence from lithub.com by Gina Chung.
0:36.3	One of the most notable features of folktales, fairy tales, myths, and legends are their
0:41.2	simplicity. These stories, many of them passed down to us across generations, are compelling
0:46.6	because of the recognizable archetypes they incorporate, the evil stepmother, the dutiful
0:51.3	daughter, the greedy king, etc. Their straightforward moral arcs,
0:55.6	and their use of magic and transformation as catalysts for the plot. In her 2024 book, Doppelganger,
1:02.7	A Trip Into the Mirror World, author Naomi Klein writes that,
1:07.2	The Doppelganger archetype has appeared across time to explore issues of life and death,
1:12.8	the body versus the soul, the ego versus the id.
1:16.5	Klein doesn't mean that the same double evil twin or changeling keeps popping up throughout history,
1:22.7	of course, but that the original concept of a doppelganger has served as a pattern model or template for writers to use in different ways,
1:31.0	each supplying it with their own imagined details.
1:35.2	Arctype's origins are in two Greek words, the verb archine meaning to begin, and the noun typos, meaning type.
1:43.9	Since its debut in English in the mid-15-hundreds,
1:47.3	archetype has taken on uses specific to the ideas of Plato, John Locke, and Carl Jung. But in everyday prose,
1:55.1	archetype is most commonly used to mean a perfect example, as in Robert Louis Stevenson's The Strange Case of Dr.
2:03.1	Jekyll and Mr. Hyde is considered an archetype of doppelganger fiction.
2:08.1	With your word of the day, I'm Peter Sokolowski.
	...

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