tome

[tohm]

SEE MORE SYNONYMS FOR tome ON THESAURUS.COM

noun

a book, especially a very heavy, large, or learned book.

a volume forming a part of a larger work.

Nearby words

Origin of tome

1510–20; < French < Latin tomus < Greek tómos slice, piece, roll of paper, book, akin to témnein to cut

Dictionary.com Unabridged Based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2019

Examples from the Web for tomes

To be sure, “the guilt of the West is beyond anything that has been recorded in films and tomes and painting,” he said.
Wole Soyinka's Nobel Nominees: The Malala Heroines||October 10, 2013|DAILY BEAST
The room is pitch-dark always, and it is full of tables and tomes.
Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, April 14, 1920|Various
Alcuins works are printed conveniently in tomes 100 and 101 of Mignes Patrologia Latina.
The Mediaeval Mind (Volume I of II)|Henry Osborn Taylor
By the antiquary and the poet these tomes may be often opened.
Amenities of Literature|Isaac Disraeli

"No, sir," said Tomes, always in possession of accurate information.
The Beauty and the Bolshevist|Alice Duer Miller
He delights in literature, and although he is well read, there are tomes which not even a Bacon could master in one lifetime.
The Gorgeous Isle|Gertrude Atherton

British Dictionary definitions for tomes

tome

noun

a large weighty book

one of the several volumes of a work

Word Origin for tome

C16: from French, from Latin tomus section of larger work, from Greek tomos a slice, from temnein to cut; related to Latin tondēre to shear

Collins English Dictionary - Complete & Unabridged 2012 Digital Edition © William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd. 1979, 1986 © HarperCollins Publishers 1998, 2000, 2003, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2009, 2012

Word Origin and History for tomes

tome

1510s, from Middle French tome, from Latin tomus "section of a book, tome," from Greek tomos "volume, section of a book," originally "section, piece cut off," from temnein "to cut," from PIE *tom-/*tem- "to cut" (cf. second element in Latin aestimare "to value, appraise," Old Church Slavonic tina "to cleave, split," Middle Irish tamnaim "I cut off," Welsh tam "morsel"). Originally "a single volume of a multi-volume work;" sense of "a large book" is attested from 1570s.