A collection of documents or files containing detailed information about a person or subject, usually kept for official purposes.
From French 'dossier,' which comes from 'dos' meaning 'back' (from Latin 'dorsum'). The term originally referred to documents tied together with a label on the back, and it entered English in the mid-1800s.
Intelligence agencies have literal rooms full of dossiers—the CIA and FBI maintain files on millions of people, and in the digital age, companies like Google are essentially building dossiers on all of us through our data trails. The word 'dossier' now feels quaintly pre-digital, but the concept has never been more relevant!
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