Bookish Is a Bad Thing? A History of The Word "Bookish"

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Addison Rizer is a author and reader of something that may be described as bizarre, unhappy, or scary. She has an MA in Professional Writing and a BA in English. She writes for Book Riot and Publishers Weekly and is at all times in search of extra methods to gush concerning the books she loves. Find her revealed work or contact her on her web site or at addisonrizer at gmaildotcom.

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If you’re concerned within the literary world in any respect, you’ve in all probability heard the phrase “bookish” someplace. You might need even been referred to as it a couple of times or dozens of instances by teasing pals or eye-rolling relations after you spend yet one more vacation curled up within the nook, studying a e-book you’ve simply unwrapped. Or possibly that have is simply mine and mine alone.

Regardless, on the literary niches of the web, you’re prone to see bookish reward suggestions across the holidays yearly or articles about tips on how to discover bookish pals/group. Spend 10 minutes on Etsy, and also you’re positive to seek out a treasure trove of trinkets all with the phrase bookish of their title. Like bookworm or bibliophile, within the literary world, the phrase “bookish” is in all places, whether or not you prefer it or not. But what does it actually imply, and the way lengthy has it existed?

What Does Bookish Mean Today?

In the fashionable world, “bookish” is an adjective that describes one thing associated to, you guessed it, books. There might be a bookish reward, a bookish individual, or a bookish place. Some literary-geared locations have even adopted the phrase into their shops’ names, like The Bookish Shop or the unbiased bookstore Bookish in Washington State. In traditional center college speech fashion, the Merriam-Webster dictionary defines “bookish” as “of or relating to books” and “inclined to rely on book knowledge.”

I discover this two-fold which means to be attention-grabbing for the reason that wording of the latter implies a kind of unfavorable take. I see the phrase bookish as an avid reader, and I instantly assume a optimistic which means.

But, if we hint “bookish” again, you’ll see a related sentiment.

The Earliest Documented Use

The Oxford English Dictionary traces the phrase bookish again to 1542 when it was used within the sentence, “Sylla was not bookyshe nor half a good clerke.” In this use, its which means is similar as the fashionable days’ model of the phrase, used to convey that somebody is (or this sentence isn’t) a reader. Shakespeare additionally used it this manner in The Winter’s Tale when a character says, “though I am not bookish, yet I can reade Waiting-Gentlewoman in the scape.”

However, the Oxford English Dictionary additionally exhibits the phrase is utilized in a extra unfavorable technique to imply studying a lot a person doesn’t know something about the actual world. Their definition is “having only knowledge acquired from books; impractical; unworldly.” This use is seen earliest in 1566 in Medicinable Morall within the sentence, “Philosphers, (that bookish broode) may, teache the things by sleighte.” Good ‘ol Shakespeare additionally makes use of this model of the phrase in Henry VI within the sentence, “Whose bookish rule hath puld faire England downe.”

Etymology Online additionally traces it again to the 1500s with each meanings 1) “given to reading, fond of books” and a pair of) “overly studious, acquainted with books only.”

A Dictionary of the English Language by Samuel Johnson from 1755 identifies “bookish” as “given to books; acquainted only with books” after which says, “it is generally used contemptuously.”

A little later, in 1903, The Century Dictionary defines it in two methods. First, “of or pertaining to books” and second, “fond of study, hence more acquainted with books than with men; familiar with books, but not with practical life” and third, “learned.”

It appears the definition hasn’t modified a lot between the 1600s and modern-day.

The Negatives of a “Bookish Education”

Quite a few of the situations the place the phrase is utilized in literature and different publications pertain to the writer expressing concern about a so-called “bookish education.” A 1613 translation of essays by Michael Lord of Montaigne, translated into English by John Florio, digs at “schollers” saying, “see but one of these our universitie men or bookish schollers returne from school, after he hath there spent ten or twelve yeares under a Pendants charge: who is so unapt for any matter?, who so unfit for any companie?,” and later “all the advantage you discover in him, is, that his Latine and Greeke” have made him “more stupide” than when he “went from home.”

In 1692, Winter-Evening Conference Between Neighbors by J. Goodman expresses related sentiments, saying, “amongst the great number of those that have had all the advantages of Bookish Education, how few are those that are really the better for it? With many Men Reading is nothing better than a doxing kind of Idleness and the Book is a mere Opiate that makes them sleep with their eyes open” after which calls bookishness “a Disease: For by over-much Reading they surcharge their minds, and so digest nothing.”

Again in 1843, an article titled “On Classical Studies” by Sears, Edwards, and Felton remarks, “they are of that kind which we should expect to meet with in a body of writers and scholars, living for the most part in small academic communities, conversant only with books and bookish men, seldom taking part in active life or associating with men of the world.”

Less than 100 years later, in 1916, folks on the Wisconsin Teachers’ Association referenced bookishness a number of instances, with one saying the “stilted bookish worshiper of tradition, who places learning above life…has no place on the faculty of a normal school.” Later, one other stated, “There is no doubt in my mind that our public school education was entirely too bookish” defining a “bookish education” as placing “children down to study a textbook with little outside work, no actual contact with things.” A third expressed the identical saying, “Why should a study like civics be made bookish? The book should be used as a guide and a means of checking up information.”

In the identical manner fashionable mother and father and lecturers fear concerning the impacts of a digital training on kids, mother and father of the previous have been unsure about studying by way of the very books we now spend years and years lugging round and finding out by default.

Some Fun Rhymes

Of course, with many issues, the phrase bookish has made its manner into a poem or two through the years. Some of the catchiest ones, although, don’t precisely painting the bookish in a optimistic mild.

For instance, in1596, the e-book Miscellaneous Tracts comprises a poem referred to as “Epigram” with no writer recognized that goes as follows:

A scholer, newly entred marriage life,

Following his studdie did offend his spouse,

Because when she his firm anticipated,

By bookish enterprise she was nonetheless uncared for:

Comming unto his studdy, Lord! (quoth she)

Can papers trigger you like them extra then mee?

I might I have been rework’d into a booke,

That your affection would possibly upon me looke;

But in my want, withall be it decreed,

I might be such a booke you like to reede.

Husband (quoth she), which books forme ought to I take?

Marry (stated he) t’have been greatest an almanacke:

The motive wherefore I doe want thee so

Is, each yeare wee have a new, you knowe.

In Poetical Works from 1622, George Wither writes, “Although a little learning be not bad, / Those that are bookish are the soonest mad” and a difficulty of A Gentleman’s Magazine, Volume V from 1735 quotes an essay by “Mr. Pope” with the diddy “A Bookish Blockhead, ignorantly read, / With Loads of learned Lumber in his Head.”

On a Positive Note

Because I, too, am of the bookish disposition, I wished to finish this with a optimistic spin on the phrase for us bookworms to take satisfaction in. In A Spiritual Legacy… revealed by Christopher Ness in 1684, the sister of John Draper wrote of her brother “though some blamed him for being too bookish during his weakness, he answered, should reading impair my health, I am sure it refreshes my Soul.”

For all of you who, like Mr. John Draper, imagine studying refreshes your soul too, put on your bookish title with satisfaction. I do know I do. I believe the world is in books simply as a lot as it’s outdoors your door.

I hope you realized one thing concerning the phrase bookish! If you’re available in the market for extra dives into bookish historical past, take a look at this historical past of the phrase bookworm or this historical past of studying by way of the ages!

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