bookstave

plural bookstaves

1. alternativeAlternative form of bookstaff (“letter, alphabetic symbol”).

   'I can't read bookstaves, but Holiday learned himself,' said Softly. […] 'He learned me a bare five bookstaves, but it was enough to read a whole word.'

   2019, James Meek, To Calais, In Ordinary Time

   2 more examples

   […] “[Doctor Martin] had undercut the pope, cardinals, and the great bishops, ... he had proved they could not offer so much as a bookstave from holy scripture to prove that their great power and lordship were based on God's command.

   2018, Christopher Ocker, Luther, Conflict, and Christendom

   The poetic dialogue between Solomon and Saturn not only calls the rune for R the “best of bookstaves” (bocstafa brego), but it also spells out the Pater Noster, acrostically with runes, […]

   2020, D. Vance Smith, Arts of Dying, page 43