as in colloquial
used in or suitable for speech and not formal writing
a refreshingly unbookish talk on how dictionaries get made
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Recent Examples of unbookish
His parents, Evan Sr. and Elton, were members in good standing of the stolid upper middle class, active in community affairs, anti-intellectual and unbookish.
—
Marc Weingarten, WSJ, 7 Jan. 2022
Marc Weingarten, WSJ, 7 Jan. 2022
Recent Examples of Synonyms for unbookish
Adjective
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The city of big apples, hand-tossed pizzas and the colloquial adverb deadass.—
Lizz Schumer,
PEOPLE,
27 Jan. 2026
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This time around, our Traitors and Faithfuls are a beautiful assortment of Housewives, Survivors, athletes, actors, and plenty of mothers — both literal (Donna Kelce) and in the colloquial sense (Porsha Williams).—
Tom Smyth,
Vulture,
9 Jan. 2026
Adjective
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Some authors of quasi-impossible books like Nabokov (Ada, or Ardor), Pynchon (Gravity’s Rainbow) and Wallace (Infinite Jest) nevertheless manage to write unfailingly entertaining sentences that never lose a certain vernacular crackle, and that are often funny.—
Literary Hub,
Literary Hub,
5 Feb. 2026
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Poverty pimp entered the vernacular as shorthand for a nonprofit leader who became expert at accessing federal money while deflecting oversight demands as anti-poor.—
Stephen Eide,
The Atlantic,
2 Feb. 2026
Adjective
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Anyone who survived the informal audition went on to meet judges Luke Bryan, Lionel Richie, and Carrie Underwood.—
Raechal Shewfelt,
Entertainment Weekly,
10 Feb. 2026
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Unlike the specialized literary magazine and its informal cousin, the literary blog, the general-interest newspaper has a kind of noble rapacity, an encyclopedic ambition to wrap its arms around the whole of the world.—
Becca Rothfeld,
New Yorker,
10 Feb. 2026
Cite this Entry
“Unbookish.” Merriam-Webster.com Thesaurus, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/thesaurus/unbookish. Accessed 16 Feb. 2026.
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