marginalia
Americanplural noun
plural noun
Etymology
Origin of marginalia
1825–35; < New Latin, noun use of neuter plural of Medieval Latin marginālis marginal
Explanation
Marginalia are the notes you scribble along the sides of the text in a book. When you buy a novel at a used book store, you may discover the previous owner's marginalia among its pages. The notes a student takes while reading often end up in the margins of the book. This marginalia might help the reader think critically and carefully about the text, or even act as a study aid later when there's a test on the material. Marginalia gets its name from the fact that it's written in the margin, which in turn comes from the Latin marginem, "edge or border."
Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
The interstitial collage elements play the role of footnotes, or more accurately, the marginalia of a slightly older, wiser reader revisiting a beloved book.
From Los Angeles Times • Jan. 30, 2023
I created a tiny app for tracking my studies and adding marginalia to digitally scanned quotes.
From The Verge • Mar. 4, 2022
Both book and marginalia are acts of writing, collaborations between author and subject, text and reader — precisely the sort of communal-meaning making to which Barthes refers.
From New York Times • Nov. 2, 2021
All the while, Rumsfeld produced his proverbs, doodling mystic marginalia in the pages of history, reducing war and torture and other awful realities into blunt queries and gruff turns of phrase.
From Washington Post • Jul. 1, 2021
But these marginalia contradicted the text, because the ivy was silently eating away at the mortar between the stones and would one day bring the walls down.
From "The Inquisitor's Tale" by Adam Gidwitz
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
