Bartleby

Bartleby noun: a person, usually a man, who chooes not to participate in many activities because he would prefer not to.

Noun

Bartleby (plural Bartlebys)

A person, usually a man, who chooes not to participate in many activities because he would prefer not to.
- One suspects that the Bartleby of 1890 would have been encouraged to blow off some steam by splurging at one of the new department stores up Broadway.2004, Andrew Lyndon Knighton, Idle Threats: The Limits of Productivity in 19th-century America, University of Minnesota, page 21
- A lot of his releases have titles shat begin with "Con", but there's no scam to his scheme; he's just the Bartleby of the avant garde. Tour? Do press? Collaborate? He would prefer not to.2007, The Wire, numbers 275-280, C. Parker, page 61

A brilliant study of negativity, Carol is the Bartleby of American cinema.1925, The New Yorker, volume 91, F-R Publishing Company, page 73:
Minguet aptly describes Padrós as the Bartleby of Spanish and Catalan film: both a part and apart.2020, Steven Marsh, Spanish Cinema Against Itself: Cosmopolitanism, Experimentation, Militancy, Indiana Unviersity Press:

plural	Bartlebys

From the fictional character (of the same name) from the short story Bartleby, the Scrivener.

What does Bartleby mean?: Bartleby means a person, usually a man, who chooes not to participate in many activities because he would prefer not to.
How do you use Bartleby in a sentence?: A brilliant study of negativity, Carol is the Bartleby of American cinema.
What part of speech is Bartleby?: Bartleby is a noun.
What is the plural of Bartleby?: The plural of Bartleby is Bartlebys.

Adapted from Wiktionary: Bartleby (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

Last updated: 2026-09-02

Cite this entry: “Bartleby.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/bartleby. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.