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flat file

Definitions

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • noun computing A data file containing usually one record per line.

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • noun a file with two flat surfaces

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hypernyms (1)

Words that are more generic or abstract

  1. file

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  • maryw commented on the word flat file

    Cabinets designed to store and provide access to unbound paper appeared in offices in the decades immediately prior to the invention of the vertical filing cabinet. These structures were to be used with one of the new filing technologies introduced to manage the growing volume of loose paper, which had increased for a number of reasons . . . . In the last quarter of the nineteenth century, filing developed with the invention of the box file, flat file, and document file. The box file was a cardboard box shaped like a book (although popular, these were rarely stored in cabinets). As the name suggests, the flat file (also known as the board file) stored paper flat on a board. The more ambiguously named document file stored folded papers upright on their long edge.
    Craig Robertson, The Filing Cabinet: A Vertical History of Information (Minneapolis: Univ. of Minnesota Press, 2021), pp. 70–71.

    June 21, 2021