You know the people. The ones you’ve learned not to lend books to because they always forget to return them. The ones who will swear they didn’t have them or that they gave them back, even though you know that precious volume is right there on their shelves. Or worse–people who outright take books that don’t belong to them.
They are book thieves. And there’s a word for them.
Biblioklept.
Yep. The word was coined in 1880 to describe someone who snatches (or doesn’t return) books, and a Greek word was created for it to “soften the ugly word ‘book-thief’ by shrouding it in the mystery of the Greek language.”
I daresay Corinne and Christian from The Collector of Burned Books both have strong opinions on biblioklepts…unless the thieving is to keep the books safe, of course. 😉
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Roseanna M. White is a bestselling, Christy Award winning author who has long claimed that words are the air she breathes. When not writing fiction, she’s homeschooling her two kids, editing, designing book covers, and pretending her house will clean itself. Roseanna is the author of a slew of historical novels that span several continents and thousands of years. Spies and war and mayhem always seem to find their way into her books…to offset her real life, which is blessedly ordinary. 
