the.com/bookworm
A creature that devours libraries and never once chews.
means A person who loves reading and spends much of their time buried in books.
from A literal compound of 'book' and 'worm.' Before it meant the human reader, 'bookworm' named the actual insect larvae — like those of certain beetles and the so-called booklice — that tunnel through the paper and binding of old volumes, leaving telltale holes. By the 16th century the name had crawled metaphorically onto people who 'consume' books with equal hunger, though far less destruction.
- actual insect
- Real bookworms are beetle larvae eating paper and glue
- oldest insult
- Used for obsessive readers since the 1500s
- silverfish too
- These pests gnaw book bindings for the starch
- brain proof
- Heavy readers show measurably stronger neural connectivity
jorge luis borges — argentine writer who claimed to have read everything and built his entire literary output around obscure references and invented books
henry perowne character — protagonist of ian mcewan's 2005 novel 'saturday' who is a neurosurgeon obsessed with reading and collecting books
christopher morley's parnassus — 1917 collection of essays celebrating excessive book collecting and reading, with morley coining the term 'bookworm' as noble obsession