Book Moth, Book Flea, Book Mouse, or Book Louse

You’re listening to A Way with Words, the show about language and how we use it. I’m Grant Barrett.

And I’m Martha Barnette. Grant, you and I have both been called bookworms before. Do you mind that term?

Being called a worm? No, I don’t take offense. The image of burrowing into a book, that’s exactly me.

Right. Yeah. Just loving books so much and just working through them page by page like a little worm in a library, just devouring what’s there.

I love the term, too, bookworm. And it’s interesting to me that many other languages use the image of a worm devouring a book to refer to people who love reading and love libraries.

In Hungarian and Estonian, the image is a book moth, which is also kind of lovely.

And in Indonesia, the term for somebody who really loves books translates as book flea or book louse.

In Spanish, if you love books, you’re a raton de biblioteca.

Oh, it’s the same as one of the French ones, a rat de biblioteca, library rat.

Oh, there you go.

But they also have one I really love, which is Ink Drinker.

Bufa d’Ancla.

Ink Drinker.

Somebody who’s drinking the ink.

But I have to say, I like the Indonesian one, the flea, the book flea.

The idea of hopping from book to book.

Sometimes that’s what we are more than bookworms, right?

You’re like, this is not really catching me.

I’m going to hop over to this one.

Martha and I would love it if you would spill a little ink our way.

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