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bookstaff

noun
/ˈbʊkˌstæf/

Etymology

From Middle English bocstaff (“letter, written character”), from Old English bōcstæf (“letter, written symbol”), from Proto-West Germanic *bōkstab, from Proto-Germanic *bōkstabaz (“beechwood staff; written character”). Cognate with Saterland Frisian Boukstäf, Dutch boekstaaf, German Low German Bookstaav, German Buchstabe, Danish bogstav, Swedish bokstav, Norwegian Bokmål bokstav, Norwegian Nynorsk bokstav, Faroese bókstavur, Icelandic bókstafur. Likely a semirevival of the Old English term. By surface analysis, book + staff.

  1. inherited from *bōkstabaz✻ — “beechwood staff; written character”
  2. inherited from *bōkstab✻
  3. inherited from bōcstæf — “letter, written symbol”
  4. inherited from bocstaff — “letter, written character”

Definitions

  1. A letter, a letter of the alphabet, a written character.

    • As the “bookstaff” had vanished before the littera, another substance had to be employed for the purpose of writing, and the skins of animals, properly prepared and called bók fell, or book skins, appeared.
    • This is Aleph, says Isaac; the first bookstaff in the grammatic.

The neighborhood

Vish — recursive loop

No curated loop yet for bookstaff. Loops are being traced one word at a time while the ingestion pipeline matures.

sense glosses and etymology drawn from English Wiktionary · source · CC-BY-SA