architecture

American  

[ahr-ki-tek-cher] / ˈɑr kɪˌtɛk tʃər /

noun

1. the profession of designing buildings, open areas, communities, and other artificial constructions and environments, usually with some regard to aesthetic effect. Architecture often includes design or selection of furnishings and decorations, supervision of construction work, and the examination, restoration, or remodeling of existing buildings.

2. the character or style of building.

   the architecture of Paris; Romanesque architecture.

3. the action or process of building; construction.

4. the result or product of architectural work, as a building.

5. buildings collectively.

6. Computers. a fundamental underlying design of computer hardware, software, or both.

7. the structure of anything.

   the architecture of a novel.

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architecture British  

/ ˈɑːkɪˌtɛktʃə /

noun

1. the art and science of designing and superintending the erection of buildings and similar structures

2. a style of building or structure

   Gothic architecture

3. buildings or structures collectively

4. the structure or design of anything

   the architecture of the universe

5. the internal organization of a computer's components with particular reference to the way in which data is transmitted

6. the arrangement of the various devices in a complete computer system or network

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Other Word Forms

• architectural adjective
• architecturally adverb

Etymology

Origin of architecture

First recorded in 1555–65; from Middle French, from Latin architectūra; architect, -ure

Example Sentences

The exposed code related to the tool's internal architecture but does not contain confidential data from Claude, the underlying AI model by Anthropic.

From Barron's

In a post on Ambrosia’s Facebook account, the band described North as “the Hammond B3 King” after his preferred instrument and said his “sonic architecture defined a generation of progressive and soft rock.”

From Los Angeles Times

Through the partnership, Marvell will provide custom chips, while Nvidia will provide the supporting technologies and data center architecture.

From The Wall Street Journal

“Like architecture, it is quiet. It encompasses, but does not demand attention. You might not even notice it’s there.”

From The Wall Street Journal

"Based on the principle of polarization holography, we used a deep learning architecture known as a convolutional neural network model to enable the use of polarization as an independent information dimension."

From Science Daily

Related Words

• building
• construction
• engineering
• planning