bookplate

nounC1Very rare — outside the 30,000 commonest English words, so you will meet it in writing rather than in speechToo rare in one of the two pools to compare — fewer than 20 uses in speech or in writing

Other forms: bookplates

A bookplate is a label showing who owns a book. Paste in a bookplate.

It is stuck inside the front cover and usually carries a name and a device. A bookplate is how libraries trace where a collection came from two centuries later.

Definitions of bookplate

1nounbookplateA label showing who owns a book.C1
“The bookplate named a school that closed in 1911.”

bookplate is a label.

Where it comes from

Book plus plate, from the engraved plate the design was printed from; the Latin form ex libris, from the books of, is often printed on it.

From book + plate.

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA

Practised in Libraries & Museums

Practise this word

bookplate in the wild

The most traditional technique used to make bookplates is burin engraving.
Ex libris (bookplate)
In the United States, bookplates replaced book rhymes (which replaced book curses) after the 19th century.
Ex libris (bookplate)
Acheson had a personal library of some significance, which he marked with his characteristic early armorial bookplate.
Sir Arthur Acheson, 5th Baronet
Edwin Davis French was a bookplate engraver, who produced at least 330 engravings beginning in 1893.
Edwin Davis French
Mark Fernand Severin was a Belgian illustrator, engraver, and graphic artist, best known for designing bookplates.
Mark Severin

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From Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. These sentences were written by other people about their own subjects; they are here to show the word at work, not as anybody’s opinion.

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