bookshelve

B3O1O1K5S1H4E1L1V4E1

verb

To furnish (a room etc.) with bookshelves.

Scrabble 22

Meanings

verbbookshelve (third-person singular simple present bookshelves, present participle bookshelving, simple past and past participle bookshelved)

present singular third person bookshelves · participle present bookshelving · participle past bookshelved · past bookshelved

  1. transitiveTo furnish (a room etc.) with bookshelves.
    1 more example

    Their mutual courtesy remained, and they had their repertoire of comfortable rituals of simulated affection, but that was all. There had been too many houses, too many mortgages, too many false dawns, too many dark and disappointing kitchens, too many curtains that were never made and hung, too many rooms never finally bookshelved and decorated.

    1995, Tim Waterstone, An Imperfect Marriage, London: Headline Review, published 1996, →ISBN, page 129
  2. figurativelyraretransitiveTo postpone or put aside (a project, etc.); to shelve.

    In other cases, suppliers had technologies on their roadmaps that were not yet robust enough or cost-effective to be integrated into existing technologies. In such cases, the technology was “bookshelved” and revisited in the next new-product cycle.

    2002, Robert Monczka, Robert Trent, Robert Handfield, “Purchasing as a Boundary-Spanning Function” (chapter 5), in Purchasing and Supply Chain Management, 2nd edition, Mason, Oh.: South-Western, page 158

Origin

From book + shelve, or a back-formation from bookshelves, the plural of bookshelf.

Full word history & related roots →
Cite this entry
APA

bookshelve. (n.d.). In WatkinsX Dictionary. Retrieved November 4, 2026, from https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/bookshelve

MLA

“bookshelve.” WatkinsX Dictionary, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/bookshelve. Accessed November 4, 2026.

Chicago

WatkinsX Dictionary, s.v. “bookshelve,” accessed November 4, 2026, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/bookshelve.

Source: bookshelve on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.