Bookish

adj

adj ·2 syllables ·Uncommon ·Advanced level

Definitions

Adjective
  1. 1
    Fond of reading or studying, especially said of someone lacking social skills as a result.

    "From a child I was fond of reading, and all the little money that came into my hands was ever laid out in books. […] This bookish inclination at length determined my father to make me a printer, though he had already one son (James) of that profession."

  2. 2
    Characterized by a method of expression generally found in books.

    "Besides, all my New York friends were in the negative, nightmare position of putting down society and giving their tired bookish or political or psychoanalytical reasons, […]"

Adjective
  1. 1
    characterized by diligent study and fondness for reading wordnet

Synonyms

All synonyms
scholarlyacademicaridautodidacticbibliophagicbluestocking

Example

More examples

""Dennis, I'd rather refer to Kanji as logograms or sinograms." "I think those words are too bookish, Marko." "You may be correct.""

Etymology

From book + -ish.

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Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.