bibliophagous

[prettygoodword]

bibliophagous (BIB-lee-oh-fay-djuhs) - adj., book-consuming.


Bookworms, in both senses, are bibliophagous -- that is, the actual insects, mostly larvae of beetles and moths but also termites and carpenter ants, that eat through the wood-pulp pages of books, thus:


Thanks, WikiMedia!

-- and the by-metaphoric-extension people who read voraciously. (I feel singled out -- if that's possible to do to oneself.) The stem is from Ancient Greek biblíon, Attic pronunciation of bublíon, originally a strip of papyrus and by extension anything written, diminutive of búblos, papyrus, supposedly after the Phoenician city of Byblos (in modern Lebanon) it was imported from, but some suggest the naming went the other way around.


And that ends this week of eatings -- regular mix next week.

---L.

Comments

[full_metal_ox]

How inadvertently aesthetic that the bookworm-gnawings engraved a luna moth. (Says a member of a species for whom compulsive pareidolics are a majority.)

[prettygoodword]

I was seeing a pipevine swallowtail myself.

[lokifan]

Love this one!

[prettygoodword]

Om nom nom nom