The story
- Old English · inherited frombōclīċ“of or belonging to a book, scientific, biblical, scriptural”
- Middle English · inherited from*bocli
- English todaybookly
From Middle English *bocli, from Old English bōclīċ (“of or belonging to a book, scientific, biblical, scriptural”); equivalent to book + -ly. Cognate with Danish boglig (“bookish”), Swedish boklig (“bookish, literary”).
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.