{"id":511,"date":"2007-10-11T20:05:10","date_gmt":"2007-10-11T19:05:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/blog\/2007\/10\/11\/libraries\/"},"modified":"2022-08-27T10:30:47","modified_gmt":"2022-08-27T10:30:47","slug":"libraries","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/?p=511","title":{"rendered":"Peeling the library"},"content":{"rendered":"

Today’s word, library<\/strong>, comes from the Old French librairie<\/em>, a ‘collection of books’, which is a nominal use of adjective librarius<\/em>, ‘concerning books’, from Latin librarium<\/em>, ‘chest for books’, from liber<\/em> (genetive of libri<\/em>), ‘book, paper, parchment’, originally the ‘inner bark of trees’, probably a derivative of Proto-Indo-European (PIE) base *leub(h)<\/em> – ‘to strip, to peel’.<\/p>\n

In French the word librarie<\/em> means bookshop. A French library is a biblioth\u00e8que,<\/em> which comes via the Latin biblioth\u0113ca<\/em>, from the Greek \u03b2\u03b9\u03b2\u03bb\u03b9\u03bf\u03b8\u03ae\u03ba\u03b7<\/em> (biblioth\u00eak\u00ea), ‘a place to store books’, which breaks down into \u03b2\u03af\u03b2\u03bb\u03bf\u03c2<\/em> (biblos), ‘book’, and \u03b8\u03ae\u03ba\u03b7 (th\u00eak\u00ea), ‘chest’.<\/p>\n

Variations on the theme of biblioth\u00e8que<\/em> are used in a number of other languages, including:<\/p>\n

Dutch – bibliotheek
\nGerman – Bibliothek
\nGreek \u03b2\u03b9\u03b2\u03bb\u03b9\u03bf\u03b8\u03ae\u03ba\u03b7 (bibliothiki)
\nItalian\/Portuguese\/Spanish – biblioteca
\nRussian – \u0431\u0438\u0431\u043b\u0438\u043e\u0442\u0435\u043a\u0430 (biblioteka)<\/p>\n

In Welsh, a library is a llyfrgell<\/em>, from llyfr<\/em>, ‘book’ and cell<\/em>, ‘cell’, while in Irish it’s leabharlann<\/em>, from leabhar<\/em>, ‘book’ and lann<\/em> (not sure of it’s meaning*). In Chinese, a library is \u5716\u66f8\u9928 [\u56fe\u4e66\u9986] (t\u00fash\u016bgu\u0103n) = ‘map book house’.<\/p>\n

It seems that the word library, or something like it, is not used in it’s English senses in many languages. The only ones I can find are Sesotho and Tswana (laeborari<\/em>), Tsonga (layiburari<\/em>) and Venda (laiburari<\/em>), which appear to be loanwords from English. The Basque word for library, liburutegia<\/em>, might possibly have Latin or Greek roots.<\/p>\n

[Addendum] *lann<\/strong> in Irish is an archaic\/obsolete word that means floor, enclosure or church. It comes from the Old Irish lann<\/em> (building, house, land, plot, plate), from the Proto-Celtic *land\u0101<\/em> ((open) space, land), from the Proto-Indo-European *lend\u02b0-<\/em> (land, heath). It is cognate with the Welsh word llan<\/strong> (church, parish, monastery, yard, enclosure, village), the Spanish landa<\/strong> (plain), and the English words land<\/strong> and lawn<\/strong> [source<\/a>].<\/p>\n

Sources: Online Etymology Dictionary<\/a>, Wiktionnaire<\/a>, Yawiktionary<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Today’s word, library, comes from the Old French librairie, a ‘collection of books’, which is a nominal use of adjective librarius, ‘concerning books’, from Latin librarium, ‘chest for books’, from liber (genetive of libri), ‘book, paper, parchment’, originally the ‘inner bark of trees’, probably a derivative of Proto-Indo-European (PIE) base *leub(h) – ‘to strip, to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[95,102,104,107,111,116,118,127,128,10,15,34,35,41,43,45,52,64,77,78],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-511","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-chinese","category-dutch","category-english","category-etymology","category-french","category-german","category-greek","category-irish","category-italian","category-language","category-latin","category-old-french","category-old-irish-goidelc","category-portuguese","category-proto-celtic","category-proto-indo-european","category-russian","category-spanish","category-welsh","category-words-and-phrases"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/511","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=511"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/511\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":22419,"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/511\/revisions\/22419"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=511"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=511"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.omniglot.com\/bloggle\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=511"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}