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Make Your Point > Archived Issues > TSUNDOKU

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pronounce TSUNDOKU:

SUN doe koo
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connect this word to others:

Let's add the beautiful word tsundoku to our collection of terms from Japanese:

1. Literally a "great lord or price," a t_____n is a rich, famous, powerful person, usually in business.

2. Literally "public matter" or "public material for thought," a k__n is an unsolvable riddle, puzzle, or problem.

3. Literally an "empathy toward things," m___ n_ a____ (three words) is the bittersweet feeling of enjoying or appreciating things while knowing that they won't last.

(To reveal any word with blanks, give it a click.)  

definition:

According to Open Culture, in Japanese, tsunde oku means "to let something pile up;" doku means "to read;" and so the playful mashup "tsundoku" means "reading pile," or more fully, "the habit of letting books pile up into a collection, not worrying about whether you'll read all of them."

English speakers have seized on this word: we love it for its playfulness and its delightfully specific meaning. It's still rare; I can find it in only one English dictionary, but don't let that stop you from enjoying it! 

Out of curiosity, I asked a forum of Japanese speakers whether "tsundoku" was common or rare in Japan, and they reported that it's semi-common, somewhat niche, and somewhat poetic, but easily understood by most Japanese speakers. One speaker said they even knew of a bookstore called Tsundoku.

grammatical bits:

Part of speech:

Noun, usually the uncountable kind: "I love tsundoku;" "He takes joy in tsundoku."

You can also use it loosely like an adjective: "Ah, the tsundoku life."

Other forms: 

None are common. The Cambridge dictionary invites you to treat it as a countable noun and pluralize it: "Our readers are invited to send us a picture of their tsundokus."

how to use it:

In English, "tsundoku" is very rare, known only to word-lovers and book-lovers who've been lucky enough to come across it. So, you may want to gloss it for your readers if you use it.

You might talk about someone's tsundoku, someone's love of tsundoku, or someone's out-of-control tsundoku.

examples:

"Frank Rose had a tsundoku problem. After he retired several years ago from his job as a state employee -- he lives in Sacramento -- he accelerated his purchases... His collection had grown to 13,000 volumes."
  — Hector Tobar, Los Angeles Times, 2017

"The phrase 'tsundoku sensei' appears in text from 1879 according to the writer Mori Senzo, which is likely to be satirical, about a teacher who has lots of books but doesn't read them." 
  — Andrew Gerstle, as quoted in the BBC, 28 July 2018

has this page helped you understand "tsundoku"?

   

Awesome, I'm glad it helped!

Thanks for letting me know!
If you have any questions about this term, please message me at Liesl@HiloTutor.com.




study it:

Explain the meaning of "tsundoku" without saying "book-piling" or "book-hoarding."

try it out:

Thinking about your own reading habits, and your own preferred level of tidiness or minimalism in your home, is tsundoku for you? Why or why not?




before you review, play:

Try to spend 20 seconds or more on the game below. Don’t skip straight to the review—first, let your working memory empty out.

Our game this month is Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Fragments.

In each issue, check out an excerpt from a master of American prose, one in which I've changed the lovely sentence fragments into ugly but grammatically correct sentences. Try restoring the excerpt to its original glory by chiseling those sentences down into fragments.

You can check out some examples here.

Try this one today. It's from Stephen Crane's The Red Badge of Courage:

In the darkness he saw visions of a thousand-tongued fear that would babble at his back and cause him to flee, while others were going coolly about their country’s business. He admitted that he would not be able to cope with this monster. He felt that every nerve in his body would be an ear to hear the voices, while other men would remain stolid and deaf.

As he sweated with the pain of these thoughts, he could hear low, serene sentences. “I’ll bid five.” “Make it six.” “Make it seven.” “Seven goes.”

He stared at the red, shivering reflection of a fire on the white wall of his tent until, exhausted and ill from the monotony of his suffering, he fell asleep.

To see the original version, scroll all the way down.

review this word:

1. A near opposite of TSUNDOKU is

A. PARING DOWN ONE'S TOYS.
B. DECLUTTERING ONE'S BOOKS.
C. MINIMIZING ONE'S WARDROBE.

2. Antoine Wilson embraces tsundoku, reporting that, for him, the word itself transforms a stack of _____ into "a tower of potential _____."

A. coupons .. cash
B. books .. reading experiences
C. newspapers .. decoupaged works of art




Answers to the review questions:
1. B
2. B

From the game: There are lots of different ways to render each highlighted bit into a fragment! If your version pleases your ears, then you did great.

Here's the original version:

In the darkness he saw visions of a thousand-tongued fear that would babble at his back and cause him to flee, while others were going coolly about their country’s business. He admitted that he would not be able to cope with this monster. He felt that every nerve in his body would be an ear to hear the voices, while other men would remain stolid and deaf.

And as he sweated with the pain of these thoughts, he could hear low, serene sentences. “I’ll bid five.” “Make it six.” “Seven.” “Seven goes.”

He stared at the red, shivering reflection of a fire on the white wall of his tent until, exhausted and ill from the monotony of his suffering, he fell asleep.


a final word:


I hope you're enjoying Make Your Point. It's made with love.

I'm Liesl Johnson, a reading and writing tutor on a mission to explore, illuminate, and celebrate words.


From my blog:
On vocabulary...
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      How to motivate our kids to write.
      How to stop procrastinating and start writing.
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A disclaimer: When I write definitions, I use plain language and stick to the words' common, useful applications. If you're interested in authoritative and multiple definitions of words, I encourage you to check a dictionary. Also, because I'm American, I stick to American English when I share words' meanings, usage, and pronunciations; these elements sometimes vary across world Englishes.

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