talk like a book

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English

WOTD – 8 September 2022

Etymology

From the fact that the written language used in books is generally more formal than spoken language.

Pronunciation

Verb

talk like a book (third-person singular simple present talks like a book, present participle talking like a book, simple past and past participle talked like a book)

  1. (simile, informal) To talk pedantically, or using excessively difficult or literary words.
    Synonym: speak like a book
    • 1744, [Nicolas-Charles-Joseph] Trublet, “Of the Different Talents for Speaking and Writing”, in , transl., Essays upon Several Subjects of Literature and Morality. , London: J. Osborn, , →OCLC, section V, page 53:
      People ſhould not vvrite as they talk, except in letters (vvhich are but a converſation in vvriting): it is too careleſs. And they neither can nor ought to ſpeak as they vvrite, for this vvould be unnatural. I ſuppose it vvas first intended as a compliment to a perſon to ſay, He talks like a book; but this, vvhich vvas once looked upon as a compliment, and vvas, indeed, a pretty high-ſtrain'd one, has ſerved ſince for one of the diſtinguiſhing marks of a coxcomb.
    • 1846, [Honoré] de Balzac, “La Dernière Fée”, in T. D. F., transl., The Literary Garland, and Canadian Magazine; a Monthly Repository of Tales, Sketches, Poetry, Music, Engravings, &c. &c., new series, volume IV, Montreal, Que.: Lovell & Gibson, , chapter III (The Good Chemist Dies), page 79, column 2:
      “I am sure,” said Abel to Caliban, looking at the hearth-stone of the chimney with lively curiosity, “that there is below there, the entrance to a subterranean palace, like the garden in which Aladdin took his lamp, with a pavement of sapphire, pillars of diamond, golden fruits, the seeds of the pomegranate, rubies, and where a little fairy with a wand, is seated on a throne of mother-of-pearl; she is beautiful as a spring morning; she has a chariot drawn by pigeons, and she will take me to see my father and mother.” “Ah, Abel!” replied Caliban, “thou talkest like a book!”
    • 1874 March, Richard Grant White, “Linguistic and Literary Notes and Queries. IV. John Stuart Mill’s Autobiography.”, in The Galaxy. A Magazine of Entertaining Reading, volume XVII, number 3, New York, N.Y.: Sheldon & Company, , →OCLC, page 340:
      I have often thought as I sat at table with people who were found of "talking like a book," that what they said was in great measure as unintelligible to English-speaking persons who were not classically educated, as simply-bred Romans must have found that of Cicero and his set when they interlarded their talk with Greek.
    • 1877, Tom Taylor, Historical Dramas, London: Chatto & Windus, , page 323:
      Marg[are]t. And what am I but a labourer like yourselves—one o’ the hand-spinners those cranks and rollers will undo? There stands my wheel. (Points to it.) No lass in Leigh or Preston has worked harder or earned more at hand-spinning than I have. No lass in Leigh or Preston either better knows the curse invention brings to the inventor and his home. Have I not prayed my master but now, as I have prayed my father for years, to turn from these things—to leave Lancashire to the warp and weft that was good enough for our fathers, and to the old wheel and shuttle on which our hands were most at home? Mob (murmurs). She’s reet. Bob. Curse me, but thou talkest like a book. Dick. Or like a man; that’s more to the purpose. Marg[are]t. But none the more will I see this wondrous work of my master’s brain and hand—the thing he has made and loved—that’s been to him as a bairn—that may well be more to him than a wife—smashed by those that wish as little good to him as to his work.
    • 1889 January, F. M. Capes, “Art. V.—A Dominican Story-teller. ”, in The Dublin Review, volume XXI, number I (Third Series), London: Burns & Oates, , →OCLC, pages 71–72:
      [The conversations in the books] are often wanting in force (which, as they frequently take place between men alone, and rarely between women alone, is perhaps not to be wondered at); when serious they are a little apt to be sententious—the characters being too much addicted to "talking like a book"; and when lively or humorous are somewhat inclined to be rather trivial than bright.
    • 1898, Wilfred Woollam, “Fragments from Two Hearts”, in Child Illa and Other Poems, Sheffield: J. Arthur Bain; London: Simpkin, Marshall, Hamilton, Kent & Co., Ltd., pages 163–164:
      “Then, who,” the sick man meekly said, / “Shall heal the sick and hide the dead?— / “Snatch the despairer’s poisoned cup; / Clothe shame, and give the outcast sup?— / “Lighten, if only by a hair, / The load of human pain and care?” / The hermit gave a kindly look; / “Faith, now thou talkest like a book. / “Here, come!” he seized a half-charred brand— / “Write on my wall there, something grand. / “I doubt if God used thee so much / To find and heal things with thy touch.”
    • 1898, Warren B. Outten, “Man’s Inherited Martyrdom—A Fitful Study of Degeneration”, in The Tri-State Medical Journal and Practitioner, volume V, St. Louis, Mo., chapter VI (The Strange and Marvelous Difference Between Rags and Mentality.—), page 390:
      “I pray thee, Mens, didst thou not understand that this ragged man was but a crazed fool?” “Nay, sir,” said I to Vegge Go, “thou art severe in thy say; for he is but an ill-balanced man, of whom ’tis claimed that he is on the borderland, and of the higher order of degenerates.” “Gracious goodness!” said Vegge Go, “if fool he be, where dost thou find thy man of sense? He talketh like a book and looketh like a beggar.” “True,” said Theo Celsus, who had joined us. “They are oft inflated talkers, whose misguided judgment may lead them into the realms of genius, only to lapse into bombast, pretense, and mediocrity. […]”
    • 1906 January, Baroness Orczy [i.e., Emma Orczy], “Lord and Peasant”, in A Son of the People: A Romance of the Hungarian Plains, London: Greening & Co., →OCLC, part I, page 116:
      "You talk like a book, my friend," said my lord, smiling, and puffing away at his pipe, "but you talked of saving time, and I do not yet know the purpose of your errand."
    • 1926 October, Ford Madox Ford, chapter X, in A Man Could Stand Up —  (Parade’s End; 3), 1st American edition, New York, N.Y.: Albert & Charles Boni, published December 1926, →OCLC, part III, page 310:
      Being with her mother made her talk like a book. Her mother talked like a book: then she did. They must; if they did not they would scream. … But they were English ladies. Of scholarly habits of mind. It was horrible.
    • 1987, Idries Shah, “Pliny Rules in Badgersden”, in Adventures, Facts and Fantasy in Darkest England, London: The Octagon Press, →ISBN, page 55:
      ‘Unfortunately, I am one of those whose stumbling phrases, disconnected and unuttered for many a year, may displease Your Presence by their inelegance. May your life be extended.’ I touched my head, eyes and heart, in a suitably ceremonial way. ‘Thou talkest like a book’, he muttered. I searched my repertoire and resumed, ‘Noble Sir: the sacred Arabian tongue has been, for us rough mountaineers, largely a language of the books for even unto a thousand years.[’]
    • 2008, Andrew Sean Greer, “Part I”, in The Story of a Marriage (A Frances Coady Book), New York, N.Y.: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, →ISBN, page 4:
      He loved that I "talked like a book" and not like any of the other girls, […]
  2. (simile, informal) To talk precisely and with authority.
    • 1793 February, [Jean-François] Marmontel, “The Waterman of Besons”, in , transl., The Sentimental and Masonic Magazine, volume II, Dublin: John Jones, , →OCLC, page 131:
      You cannot conceive, ladies, hovv good a ſchool that tavern vvas to me. It vvas frequented by a great number of learned men, vvho talked like a book concerning the character of a vvorthy man; of the pleaſure and advantage that, in every condition of life, attended the being juſt, good, and honourable; […]
    • 1860, George Augustus Sala, “From the Tower of London to Rotterdam on the Rhine”, in Make Your Game, or, The Adventures of the Stout Gentleman, the Slim Gentleman, and the Man with the Iron Chest: A Narrative of the Rhine and thereabouts, London: Ward and Lock, , →OCLC, page 9:
      "Thence," said the slim gentleman, glibly talking like a book—a railway guide-book, at least—"thence by rail to Utrecht and Emerick on the Prussian frontier, you know. Then to Cologne—remember the Three Kings and the Eleven Thousand Virgins."
    • 1878, Robert Louis Stevenson, “Origny Sainte-Benoîte: A By-day”, in An Inland Voyage, London: C Kegan Paul & Co., , →OCLC, pages 122–123:
      But then no disgrace is attached in France to saying a thing neatly; whereas in England, to talk like a book is to give in one’s resignation to society.
    • 1936 March, John Cheever, “In Passing”, in The Atlantic Monthly. A Magazine of Literature, Science, Art, and Politics‎, Boston, Mass.: Ticknor and Fields, , →OCLC, archived from the original on 5 September 2022, section III, page 336, column 1:
      His voice, even when he spoke in hate, was precise and impersonal. He talked like a book; his talk had the clarity and dryness of a book.
    • 2012 April 27, Simon Reynolds, “Myths and Depths: Greil Marcus talks to Simon Reynolds (Part 1)”, in Los Angeles Review of Books‎, Glendale, Calif.: Los Angeles Review of Books, →OCLC, archived from the original on 20 July 2017:
      Apart from some minimal tidying up (nearly always to my questions and comments; [Greil] Marcus “talks like a book,” as folk in England used to say about eloquent persons) and one small liberty taken with sequencing to preserve chronological flow, this is exactly how the conversation went down.

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