Tuesday, August 5, 2025

Library/Bookstore

Recently, I was thinking about the French words bibliothèque (library) and librairie (bookstore).  Both are related to words that mean book:  the Greek βιβλίο and the Latin liber.  (The Italian biblioteca and libraria are comparable.)  The same situation also exists in English with library and bookstore:  library comes from the Latin liber, and bookstore contains bōc, the Anglo-Saxon or Old English word for book.

Everything is shifted over a language, but the same relationships exist:  the word for library is related to book in an-other language, and the word for bookstore contains book in an older form of the same language.