Words That Bookworms Will Either Love or Relate To

For those of us who have more than once been caught with our nose in a book (another less-than-savory image), there is a certain indescribable connection between ourselves and a story. But maybe it’s not so indescribable after all.

Abibliophobia is that moment when you’re planning a two-day trip and you pack five books because you don’t know what will happen if you have nothing to read (and you don’t want to find out). It’s a bad feeling. That must be why you have that stack of books on your nightstand!

Bibliobibuli combines the Greek biblio (“book”) and the Latin bibulous (“thirsty” or “prone to drinking alcohol”) to describe that feeling you have when you just can’t stop reading an amazing book. Who needs liquor when you’ve got 400 pages of adventure?

If you’re a bibliophile, you love books and everything about them. Even the books with unsatisfying endings or corny love affairs make their way into your collection. You’ll typically find young bibliophiles hunkered away in the library, and adult bibliophiles doing the exact same thing.

Unlike someone who experiences bibliobibuli, a bibliophage doesn’t linger long enough in any one book to drink it in. These readers absolutely devour books. They pick a book up right after finishing another one, and they may even track the books they read each year to beat their record for last year. Airport bookstores exist for bibliophages — they’ll probably finish that new novel by the time they get off the plane.

Those who have eschewed electronic reading devices may have bibliosmia, which is that heavenly feeling you get when you open a new book and smell the paper inside. It also applies to older books and that musky scent each page emits. You just can’t get that from a device.

Here’s the test for bibliomania: Look around the room. Add up the number of books you see. How many have you read, and how many are you saving for a rainy day (or a trip, or a long line, or …)? If you’ve read fewer books than you haven’t read, you may have bibliomania. Join the club.

What do you do when you find yourself in a waiting room? Some people take out their phones and doomscroll until their turn comes up, but the book-bosomed among us always have a book in our purse, backpack, laptop bag, car, or coat pocket. Admit it: You bought that coat with the big pockets for this specific purpose.

While epeolatry isn’t technically a religion, it may as well be for bibliophiles. It describes the worship of the written word. If you’re perusing a dictionary website about words to find the perfect way to refer to your love of words, you likely share the philosophy of epeolatry with us — the ones who work on a dictionary website and absolutely love it.

Your friends refuse to play online word games with you. You regularly decimate your family during a game of Scrabble (and you know that that’s not technically how to use the word decimate). You’re a logophile: a lover of words. And while that may affect your social circle, who really cares as long as you have books?

While book lovers may not be omniscient (“all-knowing”), they can certainly describe themselves as omnilegent (“all-read”). Typically used to describe someone’s in-and-out knowledge of a body of work, it’s an excellent descriptor for those who consider bestseller lists to be to-do lists, not merely suggestions.

How often do you leave the bookstore without a new book? If the answer is “not often” or “is that even possible?” then you may be a tsundoku master. Tsundoku refers to the practice of buying new books without reading them. It combines the Japanese words tsunde boku, meaning “to let things pile up” and dokusho, which means “to read books.” Tsundoku may result in a cluttered nightstand, but it does prevent the crippling abibliophobia that haunts every book lover.

If words derived from Latin, Greek and Japanese weren’t enough to encapsulate your love of reading, there’s more! Try out some clever portmanteaus that capture even more specific book-related phenomena.

Those lucky book lovers who have a dedicated book club surely know the meaning of litmosphere: the atmosphere of literary appreciation. But even if you don’t have a group of novel buddies to hang out with, there is a whole world of readers out there who love reading just as much as you do.

Nothing can please a perfictionist — not even a good book. They’re readers who can spot every red herring, name every plot hole and hate even the most likable protagonist. If you find one who does end up liking a book, never go to the movie adaptation with them unless you want an earful of “actually, in the book …”

We’ve all done it: You’re 50 pages into a book with a slow build, and suddenly that book you’ve been dying to read crosses your path. Are you really expected to wait until you’ve finished the slow one first? If not, you’re committing readultery by cheating on your first book with another. But don’t worry — books are much more understanding than spurned lovers.

Readgret can refer to two different feelings. First, it can describe that letdown you feel after finishing an amazing book too quickly without savoring it. Second, readgret can refer to your reluctance to start a book that ends up being amazing. Why were you avoiding it for so long?

In a perfect world, all conversations would revolve around books. To book lovers, they do — sometimes by force. If you bring up a great book you just finished and someone changes the subject, you can readirect by bringing up another book or by mentioning that great book again. They’d really like it if they just give it a try!

When you read a sentence that makes it feel as though the world stopped spinning, you’ve been sentranced. Reserved for only the most prosaic and poetic works of literature, this experience can give even the most egregious binge reader a moment of pause.

Oprah says you should read it. Your best friend says you should read it. Your boss really wants to talk to you about it. Do you really want to read such an ubookquitous book? Like you have a choice. Worst case scenario, you can add it to your nightstand stack and commit readultery with another book.

Now that you’ve taken your obligatory break from reading your book (by reading about books), check out these additional resources for book lovers:

• 80 Book Puns You'll Want to Read More Than Once

• Tips on Writing a Best Seller

• 50 Best Classic Books for Teens and Young Adults