![]() The word is suggestive of people who imbibe or drink too much, implying that book-addition is similar to alcohol-addiction: such a person is, if you like, a BOOKAHOLIC.Ī BIBLIOMANIAC or a BIBLIOMANE is someone who has a mania for buying, collecting, and reading books, BIBLIOLATRY is book-worship, and a BIBLIOGNOST is one who knows about books.Īnd to return us to the subject of this article, the word literary, a literary person might be described as a LITERARIAN. Mencken coined the term BIBLIOBIBULI for people who read too much. These include BOOK-BOSOMED, a term coined by the Scottish author and poet Sir Walter Scott (1771-1832) to refer to somebody who always carries a book around with them (i.e., they are always hugging a book to their chest or bosom).Īnd in the twentieth century, the American author and journalist H. There are some other book- words which, whilst rarer than the synonyms mentioned above, deserve to be better-known. LITERATE, meanwhile, refers to someone who can read, but by extension can apply to somebody well-read or, indeed, literary. ![]() And given literature’s associations with form and good style, FORMAL can also be employed here. So somebody whose writing is eloquent is being praised for their style.Īlthough it is rather colourless next to some of the above synonyms, the adjective WRITTEN is also sometimes used synonymously with literary. Of course, ELOQUENT is not only more neutral than these words but positively … well, positive in its meaning. If someone, or their writing or speech, is highfalutin it is absurdly pompous or AFFECTED. ![]() Meanwhile, the etymology of highfalutin is altogether more mysterious, though it may be related to fluting or flight. These words include BOMBASTIC, FLOWERY, FLORID, HIGHFALUTIN, and GRANDILOQUENT.īombastic denotes pretentious writing that’s full of its own importance: the word derives from the French bombace, referring to cotton wall, because bombastic writing is stuffed full of pretentious verbiage.
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