Definitions

from The Century Dictionary.

  • In a bookish manner or way; studiously; pedantically.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • adjective In a bookish way.

Etymologies

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Examples

  • These Knicks, Mr. Araton writes, were "a mix of eclectic upstarts and outsiders from schools historically black (Willis Reed's Grambling), bookishly white ('Dollar' Bill Bradley's Princeton), or categorically remote (Walt Frazier's Southern Illinois University)," with only Cazzie Russell coming from a traditional sports power, the University of Michigan.

    They Were Good Once Irwin Stelzer 2011

  • Vintage Dior Blazer: Cute, timeless, and bookishly sexy.

    Christene Barberich: This Week In eBay Obsessions: Vintage Blazers For Fall 2008

  • You should get staff to run the cafe while you both sit and read, or enjoy chatting bookishly with your customers. dark empyrean - I probably have read more than you, if not becasue i've knocked around this planet a good two decades longer than you.

    You Are What You Read Sharon Bakar 2005

  • In current usage, a ploy is more cunning than a subterfuge, not as overtly false or bookishly old-fashioned as a ruse and somewhat more creative than a tactic.

    The Right Word in the Right Place at the Right Time William Safire 2004

  • In current usage, a ploy is more cunning than a subterfuge, not as overtly false or bookishly old-fashioned as a ruse and somewhat more creative than a tactic.

    The Right Word in the Right Place at the Right Time William Safire 2004

  • It was everything together; you know I loved your mother really, sincerely, not bookishly.

    A Raw Youth 2003

  • I knew I was speaking stiffly, artificially, even bookishly, in fact, I could not speak except “like a book.”

    Notes from Underground 2003

  • And how few, how few words, I thought, in passing, were needed; how little of the idyllic (and affectedly, bookishly, artificially idyllic too) had sufficed to turn a whole human life at once according to my will.

    Notes from Underground 2003

  • Instead, a substantial force paused to lay siege to it, chiefly at the instance of General Henry Knox, who in an uncharacteristic lapse of judgment rather bookishly insisted upon the medieval military maxim that “you must never leave a castle in your rear.”

    Angel in the Whirlwind Benson Bobrick 1997

  • Instead, a substantial force paused to lay siege to it, chiefly at the instance of General Henry Knox, who in an uncharacteristic lapse of judgment rather bookishly insisted upon the medieval military maxim that “you must never leave a castle in your rear.”

    Angel in the Whirlwind Benson Bobrick 1997

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