Word.ws English Dictionary

Bokmål

/ˈbɒk.mɔːl/US/ˈboʊk.mɔːl/

Bokmål proper noun: one of the two major written standards of Norwegian, literally meaning “book language”.

Proper noun

Bokmål

  1. One of the two major written standards of Norwegian, literally meaning “book language”.
    • While 85-90% of Norwegians today use Bokmål as their written standard, Nynorsk is only used by about 10-15% of the population. Fosse’s English translator Damion Searls says many Nynorsk speakers see him “as a kind of national hero” for his championing of the language.2023 October 5, Philip Oltermann, “Jon Fosse’s Nobel prize announces his overdue arrival on the global stage”, in The Guardian, →ISSN, archived from the original on 06 Jan 2024

Synonyms of Bokmål

Origin of Bokmål

Borrowed from Norwegian bokmål (literally “book language”). The equivalent Old Norse bókamál was used in this sense as a name for Latin, as it was the primary language used for writing of biblical work in much of the Middle Ages. The modern Icelandic name for Norwegian Bokmål is bókmál. When dialect research in western Norway was pioneered by Ivar Aasen in the 1850s, bogmaal took on the meaning of written standard language, as opposed to spoken dialects and Aasen's synthesized landsmaal. The two Norwegian languages, standardized in 1907, changed names in 1929 from landsmål to nynorsk, and from riksmål to bokmål.

Phrases with Bokmål

Questions about Bokmål

What does Bokmål mean?
Bokmål means one of the two major written standards of Norwegian, literally meaning “book language”.
What part of speech is Bokmål?
Bokmål is a proper noun.
How do you pronounce Bokmål?
Bokmål is pronounced /ˈbɒk.mɔːl/.

Words near Bokmål in the dictionary

  1. bokkom
  2. bokkoms
  3. Boklaoan
  4. bokmakierie
  5. bokmakieries
  6. Bokmål
  7. boko
  8. Boko Haram
  9. Bokod
  10. bokola
  11. bokono

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: Bokmål (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:

Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Vealhurl-Bokmål.wav.

Cite this entry: “Bokmål.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/bokm%C3%A5l. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.