bibliotheca
/ˌbɪbli.əˈθiːkə/
bibliotheca · noun — A library. It carries an Arena rating of 1546, earned across 91 head-to-head judged battles.
Definition from Wiktionary (CC BY-SA 3.0).
Among words judged in Lexicurio's Arena, bibliotheca ranks #2,981 of 17,129 for Most Ponderous Words, #3,412 of 17,165 for Most Satisfying to Say, #4,025 of 17,162 for Most Elegant Words, #6,012 of 17,163 for Most Sublime Words.
bibliotheca is pronounced /ˌbɪbli.əˈθiːkə/.
Why “bibliotheca” is a great word
BIBLIOTHECA — [Noun] A library, especially a large or scholarly one. Learned borrowing from Latin bibliothēca ("library, collection of books"), itself borrowed from Ancient Greek βιβλιοθήκη (bibliothḗkē, "bookcase, library"), from βιβλίον (biblíon, "book") + -θήκη (-thḗkē, "case, receptacle"). First attested in English in the 1820s. Unlike a "bibliotheque" (which carries a French inflection and salon-like elegance) or an "archive" (which is a sepulchre for primary documents), a bibliotheca is a temple to the book as a finished, circulating object. It is the scent of aged leather and oak shelves, the profound hush broken only by the sliding of a volume from its rank, and the weight of accumulated, silent argument in a thousand spines—a fortress built not against armies, but against forgetting.
❧ Essay by Lexicurio’s AI · definition, etymology & citations from published sources
Etymology
Learned borrowing from Latin bibliothēca, borrowed from Ancient Greek βιβλιοθήκη (bibliothḗkē, “library”). Equivalent to biblio- + -theca. Doublet of bibliotheque.
Definitions & examples from Wiktionary (CC BY-SA 3.0).
Words closest in meaning
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