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積ん読 tsundoku
Buying books, not reading.
What does tsundoku mean?
The tower of unread books beside your bed. Buying is one hobby; reading is a completely separate hobby.
Example
また本を買って積ん読が増えた。
I bought more books and my unread pile grew again.
Vibe
Who you can say this to, and how it lands.
Safe to use Fine in ordinary conversation.
Culture note
It is a pun on piling things up and reading. The word was coined over a century ago, so the habit is nothing new.
The story behind tsundoku
The joke is in the sound. 積んでおく means to pile something up and leave it, and 読 is the 読 of reading, so 積ん読 is a pun that shows off slightly: the pile and the reading fused into one word. It is not a recent invention either. Writers were using it in the Meiji era, so the guilty tower is well over a century old.
That lineage is oddly comforting. Bookshops sell the habit back to you cheerfully, and readers post photographs of their 積ん読 stacks the way other people post gym progress. English borrowed the word in the 2010s, presumably because it recognised the shelf immediately.
Get tsundoku in your pocket
積ん読 is one of 308 words in YABAI, a Japanese culture snack for Android. Every word comes with its meaning, an example sentence, a vibe check and a story like the one above — in 13 languages, read aloud by your device. Paid app: no ads, no sign-up, no subscription.
