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tsundoku

tsʊnˈdoʊkuːnoun

What does tsundoku mean?

Buying books and letting them pile up unread.

Tsundoku, six ways

PlainBuying books and letting them pile up unread.
ADHDBooks bought. Books unread. The pile grows.
Gen ZThe to-be-read pile you keep adding to and never touch.
MetaphorA library of good intentions.
FormalThe practice of acquiring reading material and letting it accumulate unread.
Like I’m 5Buying lots of books and not reading them, so they stack up. That’s tsundoku.

How to pronounce tsundoku

tsoon-DOH-koo/tsʊnˈdoʊkuː/

Tsundoku in a sentence

My nightstand is a monument to tsundoku.
Tsundoku: the tower of books beside my bed.
Japanese has a word for unread book piles; English borrowed it.

Synonyms for tsundoku

book hoardingCasual, and a little harsher.
bibliomaniaAn obsessive love of books.

Where tsundoku comes from

Japanese. Tsumu, to pile up, and doku, to read, with a pun on tsunde oku, to leave piled up. Slang since the late 1800s.

Good to know

Used fondly, and often by the people who practice it. It is a noun: my tsundoku is getting out of hand.

Tsundoku meaning, on a Gloss card: Buying books and letting them pile up unread.

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In: Untranslatable words · Words with a story