bibliophile:
(plural: ‘bibliophiles‘; pronunciation: the letters ‘ph’ as said with an ‘f’ sound as in “father” — for the right pronunciation, please click here)
This word has nothing to do with the Bible, either in meaning or in pronunciation — the letters ‘bi’ rhyme with the letters ‘bi’ in “biscuit”; in the word “Bible”, however, the letters ‘bi’ rhyme with the letter ‘bi’ in “bicycle”.
a person who loves books, and likes reading and collecting books; a bookworm,
Adolf Hitler, a great bibliophile
e.g.
Adolf Hitler of the Nazi Germany is known to be a bibliophile.
Sir Ahmed Salmon Rushdie is a controversial writer and great bibliophile.
Though one of the characteristics of a bibliophile is to collect books, most bibliophiles cannot collect a lot of books for different reasons, such as lack of sources, funds and enough room to display them.
Language Study: The other words with ‘phile’ are: ‘Anglophile‘, a person who likes English language and the English culture; ‘pedophile‘, a grown-up person who likes to have sex with young children; ‘necrophile‘, a person who likes to have sex with dead bodies; etc.
“Bibliomania”, on the other hand, is a medical condition of too much fondness for owning books, and ‘bibliomaniac’ is a person who suffers from ‘bibliomania’, usually used in a negative sense.
For an interesting article on bibliophile, please click here.
