bookshelve

English

Etymology

From book +‎ shelve, or a back-formation from bookshelves, the plural of bookshelf.

Verb

bookshelve (third-person singular simple present bookshelves, present participle bookshelving, simple past and past participle bookshelved)

1. (transitive) To furnish (a room etc.) with bookshelves.
   • 1995, Tim Waterstone, An Imperfect Marriage, London: Headline Review, published 1996, →ISBN, page 129:

     Their mutual courtesy remained, and they had their repertoire of comfortable rituals of simulated affection, but that was all. There had been too many houses, too many mortgages, too many false dawns, too many dark and disappointing kitchens, too many curtains that were never made and hung, too many rooms never finally bookshelved and decorated.

2. (transitive, figurative, rare) To postpone or put aside (a project, etc.); to shelve.
   • 2002, Robert Monczka, Robert Trent, Robert Handfield, “Purchasing as a Boundary-Spanning Function” (chapter 5), in Purchasing and Supply Chain Management, 2nd edition, Mason, Oh.: South-Western, page 158:

     In other cases, suppliers had technologies on their roadmaps that were not yet robust enough or cost-effective to be integrated into existing technologies. In such cases, the technology was “bookshelved” and revisited in the next new-product cycle.

Related terms

• bookshelved
• bookshelver
• bookshelving