Other forms: bookmarks
A bookmark is a saved link so you can find a page again. Save a bookmark, a bookmark folder, bookmark the page.
The computing sense borrowed the word from the physical strip of card or ribbon, and both do the same job: mark a place you mean to return to. Most people accumulate hundreds and revisit almost none, which is the standing joke about them.
1nounbookmarkA saved link so you can find a page again.
“Save the page as a bookmark in your browser.”
bookmark is a marker.
Book plus mark, in Middle English for the physical marker. The computing sense arrived in the 1990s.
Middle English
*boke-merk
English, today
bookmark
Built from
From Middle English boke-merk, boke-merke (attested only in the bare form merk (“bookmark”)), equivalent to book + mark. Cognate with Danish bogmærke (“bookmark”), Swedish bokmärke (“bookmark”), Norwegian bokmerke (“bookmark”), Icelandic bókamerki (“bookmark”). Eclipsed non-native æstel, from astal, from hastula.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA