Well-thumbed

[avram]

Found in a textClipping file on my desktop; I think it’s a response to somebody asking about the term “a well-thumbed book” that I had trouble posting and saved and maybe never got back to:

The term dates back to the days before tape decks in cars. No books-on-tape, so if you wanted reading while you drove, somebody’d have to sit there reading to you. Hitch-hikers would wave books to flag down rides. A “well-thumbed” book was one that had been used a lot in this way. It eventually came to mean any book that had been read a lot.

In other news, I think my infant niece Amanda will grow up to become a ninja.

And Lost in a Good Book, the second of Jasper Fforde’s Thursday Next novels, is better than The Eyre Affair, the first.

Comments

[editrx.livejournal.com]

I need to look this up when I have time tomorrow, but that origin just doesn't sound right to me. I'm pretty darn sure the origin is from the habit, dating from at least the monastic period (we have evidence in books as well as manuscripts) of turning the pages with a licked thumb or finger. Hence, well-thumbed to equal well-read, or read a lot.

Where does your provenance come from?

[avram]

I made it up.