This Week’s Fun & Fancy Word: Tsundoku!

You’re surrounded by towers of books you haven’t read but continue adding to the stacks that inundate your home. Does this sound like you? If so, you may be engaging in tsundoku. The practice of buying a lot of books and keeping them in a pile (or piles as the case may be) because you intend to read them…  someday.

Etymology:
Origin Of The Word Tsundoku

Tsundoku is Japanese slang, written as 積ん読. The word dates back to Japan’s Meiji era (1868–1912) and has its origins in a pun. Tsunde oku means to let something pile up.  The oku was swapped out for doku, which means to read. And the word got mushed together to form tsundoku. [1]

According to the writer Mori Senzo, the phrase tsundoku sensei appeared in a text from 1879. One poking fun at a teacher who had lots of books but never read them. This may suggest the phrase has a negative meaning, but the act of tsundoku is seen as a positive trait. Because it isn’t hoarding, or collecting for the sake of collecting. It’s the intentional gathering of books and finding a home for them, or of reading them in the future. [2]

#Fun & Fancy Words

Endnotes:

[1]Crow, Jonathan “‘Tsundoku’, the Japanese Word for the New Books That Pile Up on Our Shelves, Should Enter the English Language”. Open Culture. (24 July 2014).

Bounocore, Julianne. “The Meaning of Tsundoku (Piles of Books) & Curing the Syndrome.” The Literary Lifestyle. June 5, 2023

[2] “Tsundoku – The Art Of Never Reading Books.” Yamamoto Magazine. January 24, 2024.