Definitions

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • noun The sort of people who read too much.

Etymologies

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

The term was coined in 1957 by H.L. Mencken, who said "There are people who read too much: the bibliobibuli". From the Greek "biblio", meaning books, and the Latin "bibulous", from "bibere" (to drink).

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Examples

Comments

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  • Good word! My kind of people.

    July 12, 2007

  • Are these people related to bibliophagists? ;-)

    July 12, 2007

  • hah. thats me.

    March 10, 2008

  • People who read too much and so are generally oblivious to the world around them.

    May 12, 2008

  • JM has read about bibliobibuli and must do some more research to determine if it is worth asking anyone he knows about the phenomenon

    December 14, 2009

  • G. Carruth and E. Ehrlich's Harper Book of American Quotations (1988) shows that this word was coined by H. L. Mencken in Minority Report, published in 1956 (not 1957, as Wiktionary claims).

    August 17, 2010

  • That's SOOOO my sister

    October 10, 2011

  • It is American humorist H. L. Mencken’s coinage, and it refers to people who read too much. Is there such a thing as reading too much? Well, Mencken thought so: ‘There are some people who read too much: the bibliobibuli. I know some who are constantly drunk on books, as other men are drunk on whiskey or religion. They wander through this most diverting and stimulating of worlds in a haze, seeing nothing and hearing nothing.’

    January 23, 2018