bibliotaph
Word Rarity
Very rare
Frequency: Zipf frequency 0.00 in modern English
19
Scrabble Score
10
Letters
3
Syllables
8
Unique Chars
Meaning
Example Sentences
- "He was, by his knowledge of the intellectual value of his store, a little bit of a bibliotaph: we have reason to think he had this feeling to an extent he knew nothing of himself."
- "The late Sir Thomas Phillipps, of Middle Hill, was a remarkable instance of a bibliotaph. He bought bibliographical treasures simply to bury them."
- "The bibliotaph buries books; not literally, but sometimes with as much effect as if he had put his books underground. There are several varieties of him. The dog-in-the-manger bibliotaph is the worst; he uses his books but little himself, and allows others to use them not at all. On the other hand, a man may be a bibliotaph simply from inability to get at his books. He may be homeless, a bachelor, a denizen of boarding-houses, a wanderer upon the face of the earth."
- "the vast collection of State-papers [...] were found only when they accidentally fell out of a false ceiling of his chambers in Lincoln's Inn; but doubtless he was a purposeful bibliotaph, otherwise those documents might not have survived those revolutionary times."
Etymology
From French bibliotaphe, from biblio- + Ancient Greek τάφος (táphos, “burial, tomb”). By surface analysis biblio- + -taph.
Word Breakdown
- Suffix: biblio-