bookstaff
/ˈbʊkˌstæf/
bookstaff noun: a letter, a letter of the alphabet, a written character.
Noun
bookstaff (plural bookstaves or bookstaffs)
- A letter, a letter of the alphabet, a written character.
- Brother Ormin cautions transcribers to follow his spelling exactly —And tat he looke well that he (And that he look well that he), An bookstaff write tweis (A letter write twice), Eywhere then it upo this book (Wherever then it upon this book) Is written o that wise (Is written on that wise), For...1870, The American Educational Monthly - Volume 7, page 449
- 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.1884, The Builder, volume 46
Examples of bookstaff in a sentence
- This is Aleph, says Isaac; the first bookstaff in the grammatic.1932, Seumas O'Sullivan, The Dublin magazine:
- How they cast their spells upon, the fronds that thereup float, the bookstaffs branchings!1976, Poétique, page 217:
Forms of bookstaff
| plural | bookstaves |
|---|---|
| plural | bookstaffs |
| alternative form | bookstave |
Origin of bookstaff
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.
Questions about bookstaff
- What does bookstaff mean?
- Bookstaff means a letter, a letter of the alphabet, a written character.
- How do you use bookstaff in a sentence?
- This is Aleph, says Isaac; the first bookstaff in the grammatic.
- What part of speech is bookstaff?
- Bookstaff is a noun.
- How do you pronounce bookstaff?
- Bookstaff is pronounced /ˈbʊkˌstæf/.
- What is the plural of bookstaff?
- The plural of bookstaff is bookstaves.
Words near bookstaff in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: bookstaff (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.
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Cite this entry: “bookstaff.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/bookstaff. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.