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stranger
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stranger
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I found the word "bibliobibuli" under the entry "read too much, people who" in The Writers Digest Flip Dictionary, but I couldn't find this word in any other dictionary I tried. I couldn't find a root for "bibuli" either. Anyone know anything about it?
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Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
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although found in tsuwm's wwftd(!) http://home.mn.rr.com/wwftd/abc.htm#B, here's from WordSpy: bibliobibuli
noun. People who read too much and so are generally oblivious to world around them.
Example Citation:
"There are people who read too much: bibliobibuli. I know some who are constantly drunk on books, as other men are drunk on whiskey or religion. They wander through this most diverting and stimulating of worlds in a haze, seeing nothing and hearing nothing."
—H. L. Mencken, Minority Report: H. L. Mencken's Notebooks
Backgrounder:
This word shows up often in collections of interesting and unusual words (though rarely in conversation!). It's a combination of "biblio-" (Greek: comb. form of book) and a variant of "biblulous" (Latin: "Freely or readily drinking").
Subject Categories:
Culture - Books and Magazines
Language - Insults
Posted on April 12, 1997
http://www.wordspy.com/words/bibliobibuli.aspwelcome to the board, biblio! 
formerly known as etaoin...
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Pooh-Bah
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Pooh-Bah
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Hi Biblio I prefer to think of myself as a bibliophile or perhaps a bibliomet (biblio + gourmet). I can quit anytime I want to. i just don't want to, so there 
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Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
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actually, this is a nonce word, coined by Mencken especially for the occasion; as per WordSpy, it's not encountered much outside of word collections.
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Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
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word collections
I like collecting bibelots. They take up much less space than tchotchkes.
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Pooh-Bah
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Pooh-Bah
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tchotchkes
Sounds like a Yiddish word? New to me, what does it mean please?
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Carpal Tunnel
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tchotchkes Yep, it's Yiddish, dixbie. on your next trip, skip Texas and come to NYBBC did a wonderful 8-part (I think) series in the late 70s or early 80s called "The Story of English." I borrowed the tapes from the library last year. I was cool with the Yiddish influence; got seriously befuddled in an earlier episode with speakers of two totally separate dialects in the north of English engaging in a bit of horse-trading. They managed.
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Carpal Tunnel
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two totally separate dialects in the north of English engaging in a bit of horse-trading
The lovely AnnaS misremembers slightly. It was two separate languages: English and Danish, as spoke over a thousand years ago. They discovered that they had many roots in common but the declensional endings were miles apart. They decided to drop the declensional endings and instead to use word order to indicate case. Quantum leap in the development of the language we know and love and argue interminably about.
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Pooh-Bah
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Pooh-Bah
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tchotchkes
Yep, it's Yiddish, dixbie
OK. Thanks. But what does it *mean?
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Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
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But what does it *mean?Oh, I thought that was clear from the context  . It means knick-knacks. Do you have that word in your version of our beloved language?
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