Etymology

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Today it means: A strip of material used to mark a place in a book. Full definition →

Middle English *boke-merk
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The story

  1. Middle English · inherited from*boke-merk
  2. English todaybookmark

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 Old English æstel (“bookmark”), from Old Irish astal, from Latin hastula (“little spear, splint”).

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.