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Bookworm   /bˈʊkwˌərm/   Listen
Bookworm

noun
1.
A person who pays more attention to formal rules and book learning than they merit.  Synonyms: pedant, scholastic.
2.
Someone who spends a great deal of time reading.






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








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"Bookworm" Quotes from Famous Books



... 'Education is not bookworm work, but the giving the subtle power of observation, the faculty of seeing, the eye and mind to catch hidden truths and new creative genius. If the cursed rule-mongering and technical terms could be banished to limbo, ...
— The Curse of Education • Harold E. Gorst

... him, at the same time that he showed a lightness of disposition which many will think at strange variance with the gravity and even solemnity of his later years. Among his fellow-students he was not distinguished by any special or exclusive devotion to study. He was certainly no bookworm, and he was known rather for his love of sport and boisterous high spirits than for attention to his lessons or for a high place in his class. More than once he was involved in affairs that, if excusable and natural on the score of youth, trenched beyond ...
— The Life of Gordon, Volume I • Demetrius Charles Boulger

... out in style on grand occasions. Hope you like it. Now I'll tell you who these chaps are, and then we shall be all right. This big one is Prince Charlie, Aunt Clara's boy. She has but one, so he is an extra good one. This old fellow is Mac, the bookworm, called Worm for short. This sweet creature is Steve the Dandy. Look at his gloves and top-knot, if you please. They are Aunt Jane's lads, and a precious pair you'd better believe. These are the Brats, my brothers, Geordie and Will, and Jamie the Baby. ...
— Eight Cousins • Louisa M. Alcott

... a typical French bookworm, bicycling to get an appetite,' he observed. 'I wonder why a certain type of Frenchman always wears kid boots with square patent leather toes, and a Lavalliere tie, and ...
— Fair Margaret - A Portrait • Francis Marion Crawford

... I immediately discovered the cause of my being so much puzzled as to its architecture. There are two doors in this magnificent room; one leads to the Duchess Drawing Room, the other to the landing, and to produce the air of privacy so delightful to a bookworm the latter is covered with imitative books, exactly corresponding with the rest of the library. I remembered on my first entering the room from the staircase, and when the servant had closed the door, there appeared but one entrance, ...
— Recollections of the late William Beckford - of Fonthill, Wilts and Lansdown, Bath • Henry Venn Lansdown

... no intention of becoming a mere bookworm, and, on the contrary, we have had one excessively brisk and pleasant game at football already this season, and should, but for the unfortunate inclemency of the weather, have engaged again this afternoon ...
— Vice Versa - or A Lesson to Fathers • F. Anstey

... learned to acquiesce in every fortune, to exercise foresight in public affairs, to rise superior to vulgar praises, to worship the gods without superstition, to serve mankind without ambition, to be sober and steadfast, to be content with little, to be no sophist or dreaming bookworm, to be practical and active, to be neat and cheerful, to be temperate, modest in dress, and indifferent to the beauty of slaves and furniture, not to be led away by novelties, yet to render honor to true philosophers." What a ...
— Ancient States and Empires • John Lord

... different from what they are now. Therefore, the contention that the administration will be changed overnight for the better after a change in the form of the State is, if not a wicked untruth to deceive the common people, the ridiculous absurdity of a bookworm. Thus the theory that a constitutional monarchy will immediately follow, if the President consents to become a ...
— The Fight For The Republic In China • B.L. Putnam Weale

... but early found their conclusions and discussions primitive. He became an ardent bookworm, reading incessantly or rather at such times when his parents permitted, for they were simple folk who were rather alarmed at their boy's interests and zeal. No noticeable difference from other boys was noted aside from precocity ...
— The Foundations of Personality • Abraham Myerson

... it is possible, he is to be an eye-witness of what he writes of; where that is out of his power he is to test all traditions and stories carefully and not to be ready to accept what is plausible in place of what is true. He is to be no bookworm living aloof from the experiences of the world in the artificial isolation of a university town, but a politician, a soldier, and a traveller, a man not merely of thought but of action, one who can do great things ...
— Miscellanies • Oscar Wilde

... in the district; squirrels come and sit on her shoulder, which is pretty, and she carries ferrets in her pockets, which is dreadful; she never reads a book, and has not got a single accomplishment, but she is fascinating and fearless, and wiser, in her own way, than any pedant or bookworm. This poor little English Dryad falls passionately in love with a great blind helpless hero, who regards her as a sort of pleasant tom- boy; and her death is most touching and pathetic. Lady Augusta Noel has a charming and winning style, her descriptions ...
— Reviews • Oscar Wilde

... library a school for the young, a college for adults, and the constant center of such educational activity as will make wholesome and inspiring themes the burden of the common thought. He should be enough of a bookworm to have a decided taste and fondness for books, and at the same time not enough to be such a recluse as loses sight of the point of view of those ...
— A Library Primer • John Cotton Dana

... mistaken!" She paused, momentarily out of breath, then resumed: "He soon found me out and was sick of me in three weeks. He disliked dances, theatres, and smart society, and buried me alive in the country. We had nothing in common; he was just a bookworm, with a sarcastic tongue, who left me a beggar! Now I am free, I am going to be a rich woman, marry a man who understands me—and lead a ...
— The Road to Mandalay - A Tale of Burma • B. M. Croker

... that the Bookworm is borrowed from Beza; but he should have added, with modern applications; and, when he discovers that Gay Bacchus is translated from Augurellus, he ought to have remarked, that the latter part is purely Parnell's. Another poem, when Spring comes on, is, he says, taken from the French. ...
— Lives of the Poets, Vol. 1 • Samuel Johnson

... said Alexius, but so low as to hide his meaning from the officers of the wardrobe, who entered to do their office,—"thus, then, this bookworm—this remnant of old heathen philosophy, who hardly believes, so God save me, the truth of the Christian creed, has topp'd his part so well that he forces his Emperor to dissemble in his presence. Beginning by being the buffoon of the court, he has wormed himself into all its secrets, made himself ...
— Waverley Volume XII • Sir Walter Scott

... mile beyond the precincts of the park. His hours, consequently, must be loitered away in some dwelling near at hand. Algernon was not a young man of sentimental habits. He was neither poet nor bookworm, and it was very improbable that he would fast all day under the shade of forest boughs, watching, like the melancholy Jacques, the deer come down to the ...
— Mark Hurdlestone - Or, The Two Brothers • Susanna Moodie

... wild thing like me beside a learned great man like you. I should be like the frog in the fable! And yet I should so much like to learn, to know things, to be initiated. What fun it would be to become a regular bookworm, to bury my nose in a lot of old papers!" she had gone on, with that self-satisfied air which a smart woman adopts when she insists that her one desire is to give herself up, without fear of soiling her fingers, to some unclean task, such ...
— Swann's Way - (vol. 1 of Remembrance of Things Past) • Marcel Proust

... man was not a mere bookworm nor a pedant, though Le Brun, whose voice was the voice of the Sorbonne then, prophesied a red hat for him. The red hat never came, nor did a marshal's baton, though Bevilacqua himself foretold the latter one day, as ...
— Orrain - A Romance • S. Levett-Yeats

... people gaze at it: 'Relic from the Hawthorne Cottage.' The Hawthorne Cottage stood half a mile out of Stockbridge on the road to Lenox. It was burned two months ago. It was a little red story-and-a-half house on a lonely farm, and an old farmer, himself somewhat of a bookworm, dwelt in it with his family at the time it mysteriously took fire. The cottage was a landmark, because Nathaniel Hawthorne dwelt therein in 1850 and 1851 for a year and a half. A great many people go out to see the ruins ...
— Memories of Hawthorne • Rose Hawthorne Lathrop

... What could I do?—Oh, yes, I recollect all now! I married her, that my old friend's child might have a roof to her head, and come to no harm. You see I was forced to do her that injury; for, after all, poor young creature, it was a sad lot for her. A dull bookworm like me,—cochlea vitam agens, Mr. Squills,—leading the life of a snail! But my shell was all I could offer to my poor ...
— The Caxtons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... quoted Clorinda. "You are the bookworm, I remember, and filch romances and poems from the shelves. And you have read that it is mostly pain that makes a woman? 'Tis not true. 'Tis a poor lie. I am a woman and I do not suffer—for I will not, that I swear! And when I take an oath I keep it, mark ...
— A Lady of Quality • Frances Hodgson Burnett



Words linked to "Bookworm" :   student, bookman, scholar, purist, scholarly person, reader, scholastic, pedant



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