document

An original or official paper used as the basis, proof, or support of anything else, including any writing, book, or other instrument conveying information pertinent to such proof or support.

Noun

  1. An original or official paper used as the basis, proof, or support of anything else, including any writing, book, or other instrument conveying information pertinent to such proof or support.
    • Saint Luke […] collected them from such documents and testimonies as he […] judged to be authentic. - 1794, William Paley, View of the Evidences of Christianity:
  2. Any material substance on which the information is represented by writing.
    • If a morsel of food fell off your plate, the advice of one contemporary document was to pick it up, make the sign of the cross over it, season it well - and then eat it. - 1999, Robert Lacey, Danny Danziger, The Year...
  3. A file that contains text.
    • That exception is the HTML <IMG> tag–which transcludes an image into the context of the document. The image itself is neither embedded within the document nor copied—it is transcluded. - 2012, Julie A. Jacko, editor,...
  4. An object conveying information by whatever means, capable of being indexed alongside other similar objects.
    • This study examines video game photography as a documentary practice. […] The three themes from this study's findings – that video game photographs act as (1) vehicles for storytelling, (2) creative trophies, and (3)...
  5. That which is taught or authoritatively set forth; precept; instruction; dogma.
    • And particularly they should take care that the memory of the learner be not too much crowded with a tumultuous heap or overbearing multitude of documents or ideas at one time. - 1741, Isaac Watts, The Improvement of...
  6. An example for instruction or warning.
    • They were forthwith stoned to death, as a document to others. - 1614, Sir Walter Raleigh, The Historie of the World:

Origin

Borrowed from Middle French document, from Latin documentum.

Forms

documents

Hyponyms

here document Web document

Related

docent docile doctor doctorate doctrinaire doctrinal doctrine indoctrinate

Derived

ancient document doculect documental documentality documentarian documentary document camera document management system documentology document-oriented document retrieval document structuring document-style e-document electronic document here-document hyperdocument identity document interdocument intradocument liquid document metadocument microdocument multidocument

Verb

  1. To record in documents.
    • He documented each step of the process as he did it, which was good when the investigation occurred.
    • The relationship between memory as lived and history as documented is always a complex dialogue — each informing, and disinforming, the other. - 2009 May 18, Henry Greenspan, “Of Memory and Israel”, in The New York...
    • “Natural languages are adequate, but that doesn’t mean they’re optimal,” John Quijada, a fifty-three-year-old former employee of the California State Department of Motor Vehicles, told me. In 2004, he published a...
  2. To furnish with documents or papers necessary to establish facts or give information.
    • A ship should be documented according to the directions of law.

Forms

documents documenting documented

Derived

documentability documentable documentation documentor misdocument nondocumented overdocument overdocumented photodocument redocument underdocumented undocument undocumented