archetype

noun

ar·​che·​type ˈär-ki-ˌtīp 

1

: the original pattern or model of which all things of the same type are representations or copies : prototype

… the House of Commons, the archetype of all the representative assemblies which now meet …

—Thomas Babington Macaulay

also : a perfect example

He is the archetype of a successful businessman.

2

: idea sense 4c

3

psychology : an inherited idea or mode of thought in the psychology of Carl Gustav Jung that is derived from the experience of the race and is present in the unconscious of the individual

archetypal

ˌär-ki-ˈtī-pəl 

adjective

or less commonly archetypical

ˌär-ki-ˈti-pi-kəl 

an archetypal English village

archetypally

ˌär-ki-ˈti-pə-lē 

adverb

or less commonly archetypically

ˌär-ki-ˈti-pi-k(ə-)lē 

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.”

Synonyms

• ancestor
• antecedent
• daddy
• foregoer
• forerunner
• granddaddy
• grandaddy
• precursor
• predecessor
• prototype

Examples of archetype in a Sentence

Recent Examples on the Web

The report introduces the Agent Boss—a new archetype for the modern worker who leads not just people, but AI agents. —Nirit Cohen, Forbes.com, 23 Apr. 2025

Harrison Ford forged an archetype: the skeptical rogue, a smirk king, He Who Shot First. —Nicholas Quah, Vulture, 22 Apr. 2025

So, Coogler took those familiar archetypes — the Hoodoo conjurer, the woman who can pass as white, the shop owners, the musical prodigy whose dad is a preacher, the old blues musician who is constantly self-soothing, and even the Smokestack twins — and gave them new depth. —Angelique Jackson, Variety, 17 Apr. 2025

But what happens when that archetype appears in a room full of Black women—women navigating power, visibility, ambition, and public expectation? —Shelby Stewart, Essence, 8 Apr. 2025

Word History

Etymology

Latin archetypum, from Greek archetypon, from neuter of archetypos archetypal, from archein + typos type

First Known Use

1545, in the meaning defined at sense 1

Rhymes for archetype

• allotype
• antitype
• biotype
• collotype
• genotype
• haplotype
• holotype
• hypotype
• isotype
• lectotype
• linotype
• monotype

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Kids Definition

archetype

noun

ar·​che·​type ˈär-ki-ˌtīp 

: the original pattern or model from which something is copied

archetypal

ˌär-ki-ˈtī-pəl 

adjective

Medical Definition

archetype

noun

ar·​che·​type ˈär-ki-ˌtīp 

1

a

: a primitive generalized plan of structure deduced from the characters of a natural group of plants or animals and assumed to be the characteristic of the ancestor from which they are all descended

b

: the original ancestor of a group of plants or animals

2

: an inherited idea or mode of thought in the psychology of C. G. Jung that is derived from the experience of the race and is present in the unconscious of the individual

archetypal

ˌär-ki-ˈtī-pəl 

adjective