Bookstore

How to spell bookstore

9 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce bookstore

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does bookstore mean?

1. nounA shop that sells books.

Bookstore in a sentence

• The new bookstore on the high street has a quiet reading corner.

• She ordered the novel online because the local bookstore had sold out.

Where does bookstore come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

This is a transparent English compound, joining 'book' with 'store'. The first element 'book' descends from Old English 'boc', a native Germanic word that some scholars link to 'beech', because early writing was thought to have been scratched onto beechwood tablets. The second element 'store' came into English in the 1300s from Old French 'estore', a place where supplies are kept, ultimately from the Latin 'instaurare' meaning 'to renew or restore'. The combined word 'bookstore' is largely an American coinage of the late 1700s, since British writers have traditionally preferred 'bookshop'. The spelling is straightforward because both parts are common everyday words; the only thing to watch is that it is written as one solid word, not two.

How the word is built

• book (a bound volume of pages)
• store (a shop, place where goods are sold)