Other forms: tomes
A tome is a large heavy book. A weighty tome, a dusty tome, a hefty tome.
It is nearly always said with a hint of a joke about the size, and it suggests something scholarly and unread. The Greek behind it means a section cut from a longer work, which is why a multi-volume history is properly a set of tomes.
1nountomeA large heavy book.
“He carried a heavy tome on Roman history over to the reading room.”
tome is a book.
Greek tomos means a section or roll of papyrus, from temnein, to cut. Anatomy is a relative.
Proto-Indo-European
*temh₁-
Ancient Greek
τόμος — section, roll of papyrus, volume
Latin
tomus — section of larger work
Middle French
tome
English, today
tome
Built from
From Middle French tome, from Latin tomus (“section of larger work”), from Ancient Greek τόμος (“section, roll of papyrus, volume”), from τέμνω (“to cut, separate”).
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA