repository

noun re·pos·i·to·ry \ ri-ˈpä-zə-ˌtȯr-ē \

Updated on: 22 May 2018

Definition of repository

plural repositories

1 : a place, room, or container where something is deposited or stored : depository

2 : a side altar in a Roman Catholic church where the consecrated Host is reserved from Maundy Thursday until Good Friday

3 : one that contains or stores something nonmaterial

considered the book a repository of knowledge

4 : a place or region richly supplied with a natural resource

5 : a person to whom something is confided or entrusted

See repository defined for English-language learners

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Examples of repository in a Sentence

a repository for nuclear waste
He is the repository of many secrets.
She is the repository of her family's history.

Recent Examples of repository from the Web

Companies like 23andMe — which sells $199 kits that decode users’ health and ancestral data — has become one of the largest private DNA repositories in the world.

— lizzie johnson, San Francisco Chronicle, "Arrest of suspected Golden State Killer through genealogy opens ‘Pandora’s box’," 29 Apr. 2018
The incident resulted in a radiation release that forced the closure of the repository for nearly three years and prompted an expensive recovery effort and a major policy overhaul for handling Cold War-era waste.

— Washington Post, "Officials say radioactive sludge barrel ruptures now total 4," 25 Apr. 2018
But just as your inbox has become a repository for 50-percent-off-sale emails and scammers disguised as customer support, disseminating your phone number across the internet creates opportunities to find you and obtain your sensitive info.

— alexander george, Popular Mechanics, "Why Your Phone Gets So Many Spam Calls, And How To Stop Them," 20 Apr. 2018
That’s why the North American Orchid Conservation Center (NAOCC) is building a national network of repositories to bank orchid seeds and the fungi found in their roots.

— kimbra cutlip, Smithsonian, "Why the Conservation of Orchids Is No Simple Matter," 28 Feb. 2018
Smith was listed on the National Missing and Unidentified Persons System, better known as NAMUS, a repository for missing persons' cases.

— jason pohl, azcentral, "From missing to legally dead: The search for Sheriff's Office posse member Sam Grider," 12 Jan. 2018
Although still impermanent in its nature, our tent was now also the repository of the thing that mattered most.

— margarita gokun silver, Longreads, "The Forever Nomad," 30 Apr. 2018
Since her birth nearly 60 years ago, the 11½-inch doll has been a repository for every impossible expectation thrust on womankind.

— lorraine ali, latimes.com, "The creators of 'Tiny Shoulders: Rethinking Barbie' on remaking America's doll just before #MeToo," 27 Apr. 2018
The initial release, which Voyage calls Open Autonomous Safety (OAS), will take the form of a GitHub repository containing documents and code.

— mark harris, Ars Technica, "This startup’s CEO wants to open-source self-driving car safety testing," 24 Apr. 2018

These example sentences are selected automatically from various online news sources to reflect current usage of the word 'repository.' Views expressed in the examples do not represent the opinion of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback.