Tuesday, April 02, 2013

B is for Bibliobibuli


Bibliobibuli: One who reads too much, who is drunk on books as some are drunk on whiskey or religion.

Louise Brown of Stranraer, Scotland borrowed nearly 25000 library books between 1946 and 2009; mostly romance, war and historical fiction. She's ninety five years old as of today if in fact she's still alive, but there are no references to her since June 2009 that I can find. Whether she ever hit the 25K mark is unknown to me.

Not to be confused with bibliophile: also a bookworm but without such a harsh connotation, or bibliomania: a craze for collecting books. Um... no comment on that.

Source: Notebook 71 (1956) H. L. Mencken
Google hits: 33,600


Belly-bender: A cake of floating ice which tips under as one passes from piece to piece in a precarious game of bravado played by boys.

According to my uncle John, a big-time snowmobile junky, who has played this game, albeit unintentionally, aboard skidoo, and dunked at least one machine into the deep, the thing to do upon realization you are up the proverbial not-so-frozen creek without a paddle (more likely a small Northern Ontario lake) as the ice is giving away under your snowmobile, is to gun the machine to its maximum velocity. You can go a fair distance on a skidoo, skimming the water, for much the same reasons of physics by which thrown flat stones will skip, though not indefinitely.

Source: Dictionary of American English (1940) William Craigie, James Hulbert
Google hits: 23,100


Bottle-thrall: A confirmed drunkard. Thrall: slave. Literally slave to the bottle.

Source: Lost Beauties of the English Language (1874) Charles Mackay
Google hits: 1300

Go home sheep. You're drunk. It's not even night time.

2 comments:

Konstanz Silverbow said...

Bibliobibuli, Who knew?! I certainly didn't! I can't even imagine . . . that is such a huge number of books!

Awesome to know!


Konstanz Silverbow
nothoughts2small.blogspot.com
A-to-Z April Blogging Challenge Co-host
www.a-to-zchallenge.com

Elizabeth Twist said...

Bibliobibuli. Bibliobibuli. Bibliobibuli. Bibliobibuli.

(I'm just trying to learn how to type it so I can use it frequently and with total confidence.)

Elizabeth Twist: Writer, Plague Enthusiast