Word.ws English Dictionary

in the books

in the books prepositional phrase: finished; concluded; able to be regarded as a matter of record.

Prepositional phrase

  1. (idiomatic) Finished; concluded; able to be regarded as a matter of record.
    • Two Bird swishes and a Johnny Davis three-point air ball later, the victory was in the books.1982 Feb. 3, Bob Ryan, "Parish spruces up Celtics, 109-105," Boston Globe p. S-1 (retrieved 18 March 2013)
    • The 1998 Academy Awards ceremony is in the books, and now that we have had a chance to reflect on the big event, we can put the proceedings in some context.1998 May 25, Ted Geltner, “Ocala's Peggy Takacs Wins Big With Oscar Picks”, in Ocala Star-Banner, retrieved 19 Mar 2013, page 1C

Questions about in the books

What does in the books mean?
In the books means finished; concluded; able to be regarded as a matter of record.
What part of speech is in the books?
In the books is a prepositional phrase.

Words near in the books in the dictionary

  1. in the bed
  2. in the bedroom
  3. in the biblical sense
  4. in the black
  5. in the blink of an eye
  6. in the books
  7. in the bottom of the bag
  8. in the bucket
  9. in the buff
  10. in the business of
  11. in the can

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: in the books (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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Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: en-au-in the books.ogg.

Cite this entry: “in the books.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/in_the_books. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.