bookmark

Etymology

It is formed from English book + mark, in the sense of a mark or sign.^[2][3][4][5] The OED compares the longer bookmarker, which it dates from 1835,^[2] and Etymonline from 1838, two years before its own first date for bookmark.^[3]

Earliest recorded meaning

A strip of card, leather, ribbon or the like laid between the pages of a book to mark a place: 1833, in Anne Manning's Village Belles.^[2][6] Merriam-Webster Unabridged also dates this sense to 1833,^[7] the Merriam-Webster Collegiate to 1838,^[8] Etymonline to 1840,^[3] and Dictionary.com to 1860–65.^[5]

Semantic evolution

In the later 19th century the word was briefly used for an ownership mark or label in a book, a bookplate (from 1876), a sense the OED now calls rare.^[2][6] The computing sense, a record of the location of a document or of a place in it for quick access, appears in 1982, in the magazine Byte, and later came to mean above all a stored address of a web page.^[2][4] The verb, to mark a place in a book with a bookmark, is recorded from 1959, in Alan Sillitoe;^[2] Etymonline finds a verb by 1900.^[3] In later use the verb is chiefly a computing word, to create a bookmark for a web page or in an electronic document,^[2][7] and the Merriam-Webster Collegiate dates that computing verb to 1985.^[8]

Timeline

• 1833 – a strip of material placed between the pages of a book to mark a place.^[2][7]
• 1876 – a mark or label of ownership in a book, a bookplate (now rare).^[2]
• 1959 – verb, to mark a place in a book with a bookmark.^[2]
• 1982 – computing, a record of the location of a document or a place in it.^[2]
• 1985 – verb, to create a computer bookmark for something.^[8]

Meanings

Noun

1. A strip of ribbon, leather, card or similar material placed between the pages of a book to mark the reader's place: She tucked a bus ticket into the novel as a bookmark.^{[9][7][2][10]}
2. In computing, a stored address of a website or web page, or a menu entry or icon that acts as a shortcut to it.^[9][7][2]
3. In computing, a marker placed in an electronic document so that a particular part of it can be found again quickly.^[9][2][4]

Verb

1. To create a bookmark for a web page or a place in an electronic document: He bookmarked the recipe to try at the weekend.^[7][8][2]
2. To mark a place in a book with a bookmark.^[2]

Related words

• book
• mark
• bookmarker

References

1. ^ a b Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
2. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p Oxford English Dictionary Online (accessed March 2026), Oxford: Oxford University Press
3. ^ a b c d Harper, Douglas. Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com
4. ^ a b c Shorter Oxford English Dictionary on Historical Principles (2002), 5th ed., ed. William R. Trumble and Angus Stevenson, Oxford: Oxford University Press
5. ^ a b Dictionary.com Unabridged (2016), based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, New York: Random House
6. ^ a b Kay, Christian; Roberts, Jane; Samuels, Michael; Wotherspoon, Irené, eds. (2009), Historical Thesaurus of the Oxford English Dictionary, Oxford: Oxford University Press; online edition (2024)
7. ^ a b c d e f Merriam-Webster Unabridged Dictionary (2024), online ed., Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster
8. ^ a b c d Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary (2003), 11th ed., Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster
9. ^ a b c Collins English Dictionary (2023), Glasgow: HarperCollins
10. ^ The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (1992), 3rd ed., Boston: Houghton Mifflin