Comparle

Japanesepractice word

tsundoku

積ん読tsoon-DOH-koo[tsɯndokɯ]

buying books and letting them pile up unread — book-hoarding

Closest in English: book-hoarding, bookhoarding, book-piling. None of them covers it.

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The story

The word is a Meiji-era pun: tsunde oku, to pile up and leave, with doku, reading, tucked in at the end. Japanese attaches no shame to it; the pile simply exists, and grows. English book people have lately adopted it alongside their own coinage, book-hoarding.

How it went in the game

Contains the answers. If you want to play the word yourself first, leave this closed.

  1. Which language is it from?Japanese
  2. What does it literally say?Pile-up-and-read
  3. Where would you hear it?Checkout at a bookshop, arms full again
  4. What does it mean?Buying books that pile up unread

How it went

Harder than most words so far.

Round two, literally, was where most points went.