subdirectoryn.
/ˈsʌbdᵻˌrɛkt(ə)ri/, /ˈsʌbdʌɪˌrɛkt(ə)ri/, U.S. /ˈsəbdəˌrɛkt(ə)ri/, /ˈsəbdaɪˌrɛkt(ə)ri/ 1. A subordinate or subsidiary body of directors. In quot. 1827 with reference to the French Directory; cf. directory n. 6.
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1827 C. H. Phipps Historiettes II. xvii. 326 Even the Grisons, which had not before acknowledged French supremacy, or that of their sub-directories, were subdued by the arms of Massena.
1889 J. Schouler Hist. U.S. IV. xiv. 135 The Bank, by a secret vote of the directors, set aside an indefinite fund for insidious uses and committed to a sub-directory..the astute management of their canvass.
1979 Financial Times 9 Oct. 8/7 Mr. Abusono, head of the export sub-directory of Indonesian Customs and Excise.
2000 J. W. Huston Flash Point (2001) ii. 16 That made him invaluable to the Agency and in particular, the Middle Eastern Section, in the subdirectory of Emerging Terrorist Organizations.
2.
a. A discrete alphabetically ordered subsection of a larger printed directory (directory n. 3). Now rare.
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1962 NAEB Jrnl. Mar. 10/1 The first Educational Media Index will be published early next year. The number and size of each sub-directory is not yet known.
1966 Americas 22 316 Master Directory for Latin America..contains ten sub-directories with names and addresses of U. S., Western European, and Latin American organizations which are interested in various aspects of contemporary Latin America.
1995 P. Theroux Pillars of Hercules iii. 53 The phone book listed a number of rental agencies. And because of the large British population there were many British businesses, a whole sub-directory listing importers of sausages and beer.
b. Computing. A directory contained within another directory (directory n. Additions c). Cf. subfolder n. at sub- prefix 2a(b)(ii).
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society > computing and information technology > data > [noun] > file > organization > directory or sub-directory
directory1962
file directory1968
subdirectory1971
1971 K. Thompson & D. M. Ritchie Unix Programmer's Man. 3 Nov. §13.19 in cm.bell-labs.com (O.E.D. Archive) The indicated files and directories, together with all subdirectories, are dumped onto the tape.
1983 Austral. Microcomputer Mag. Aug. 19/2 The tree command displays all parent and subdirectories and, optionally, all the files residing in the subdirectories on a specified drive.
1993 R. J. Pond Introd. Engin. Technol. (ed. 2) viii. 224 The backslash [\\\\] indicates you are in a subdirectory of the C drive.
2010 S. Leary Beginning WordPress 3 xi. 301 If you would prefer not to have WordPress's files cluttering up your site's root directory..you can install WordPress in a subdirectory.
This entry has been updated (OED Third Edition, June 2012; most recently modified version published online March 2022).
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n.1827