Bookness

noun

noun ·Rare ·Advanced level

Definitions

Noun
  1. 1
    The quality of being a book. uncountable

    "[…] implies a philosophical distinction between bookness and tableness. There is no more requirement to show why an experience cannot be a brain-state than there is to show why a book cannot be a table."

  2. 2
    The qualities of a book endowing it with its uniqueness or particularity. uncountable

    "The cover of the book may not be decisive for the content, but its shape, texture, weight and not least “wear and tear” may still be an important aspect of its “bookness” and how we experience it as a book. These “border resources” are lost when every digital copy gets its own form, and hence a relatively established source for interpretation dissolves."

Example

More examples

"[…] implies a philosophical distinction between bookness and tableness. There is no more requirement to show why an experience cannot be a brain-state than there is to show why a book cannot be a table."

Etymology

From book + -ness.

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