archetypenoun/ˈɑːkɪtaɪp/

• 1

  An original model of which all other similar concepts, objects, or persons are merely copied, derivative, emulated, or patterned.

  • Near-synonym: prototype (sometimes synonymous)
  • According to that Cabaliſticall Dogma: If Abram had not had this Letter [i.e., ה (he)] added unto his Name he had remained fruitleſſe, and without the power of generation: […] So that being ſterill before, he received the power of generation from that meaſure and manſion in the Archetype; and was made conformable unto Binah.
• 2

  An ideal example of something; a quintessence.

  • The Bishop [of Gloucester, William Warburton] asserts there is no Archetype, because eloquence is a variable thing, depending on custom and fashion; […] there is no Archetype in nature of perfect eloquence; its very constituent parts, as they are deemed, having no substance or reality in them.
  • “New Kid On The Block” doubles as a terrific showcase for the Sea Captain who, in the grand tradition of Simpsons supporting characters, quickly goes from being a stereotype to an archetype, from being a crusty sea-captain character to the crusty sea-captain character.
• 3

  literaturemediapublishingA character, object, or story that is based on a known character, object, or story.

  • Archetypes are figures and creatures that inhabit the pools of the world's mythology, folk tales, epics, and ballads. […] Thus archetypes are universal essences that we all recognize: the Mother, the Lover, the Trickster, the Spiritual and Temporal Leader, the Devil.
• 4

  human-sciencespsychologysciencesAccording to Swiss psychologist Carl Jung: a universal pattern of thought, present in an individual's unconscious, inherited from the past collective experience of humanity.

  • The three archetypes so far discussed—the shadow, the anima, and the wise old man—are of a kind that can be directly experienced in personified form. In the foregoing I tried to indicate the general psychological conditions in which such an experience arises. But what I conveyed were only abstract generalizations. One could, or rather should, really give a description of the process as it occurs in immediate experience. In the course of this process the archetypes appear as active personalities in dreams and fantasies.
  • It has been suggested that Prothean data recording is highly dependent on a certain point of view, what Carl Jung described as the collective unconscious. The 'cipher' needed to comprehend the images implanted in Shepard's mind is the cultural knowledge of a Prothean: the archetypes, biological instincts, and common experiences universal to the race.
• 5

  human-scienceslinguisticssciencesA protograph (“original manuscript of a text from which all further copies derive”).

  • The outstanding importance of this manuscript for the text of Aeschylus has long been recognized. In the last century some scholars even persuaded themselves that it was the archetype of the whole extant tradition.

archetypeverb/ˈɑːkɪtaɪp/

• 1

  To depict as, model using, or otherwise associate an object or subject with an archetype.

  • The whole issue of generalizing and overgeneralizing is always an issue. I use the term "archetyping." I say, "No, I am not stereotyping; I am archetyping." Stereotypes tend to be accusatory. I want to move the discussion away from a discussion of right and wrong to right and left—this is the way it is over here, and this is the way it is over there—and then look at the problems that develop as a result of each group interacting according to the standards of its own culture.
  • These stereotypes of indigenous peoples implied obvious roles for the associated Europeans—heirs to the Dying, bleaching agents to the Whitening. But the interaction of conceptions of Us and Them went further, through archetyping and anti-typing. Maoris were sometimes archetyped or idealized, as with the Noble Savage and some Whitening Savages.