bookworm
noun/ˈbʊk.wɜːm/
Etymology From book + worm.
1
Any of various insects that infest books.
2
Figuratively An avid book reader.
- “This,” remarked the sedate observer beside me, “is a bookworm,—one of those men who are born to gnaw dead thoughts. His clothes, you see, are covered with the dust of libraries.1846, Nathaniel Hawthorne, “Earth's Holocaust”, in Mosses from an Old Manse:
- Derived terms
- bookwormish, bookwormism, bookwormy
- Related terms
- have one's nose in a book