What's the difference between bookish and formal?

Bookish


Definition:

  • (a.) Given to reading; fond of study; better acquainted with books than with men; learned from books.
  • (a.) Characterized by a method of expression generally found in books; formal; labored; pedantic; as, a bookish way of talking; bookish sentences.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) A bookish teenager regarded as the smartest of the Murdoch brood, James endured an awkward adolescence in the public eye and was famously photographed asleep on a sofa at a press conference while working as a 15-year-old intern at his father's old paper, the Sydney Mirror, a picture the rival Sydney Morning Herald gleefully ran on its front page the next day.
  • (2) Trump insisted that he is a believer in free trade and declared: “I am not an isolationist.” But it was hard to escape the testy relationship between the bookish woman now seen as a crucial bulwark of the postwar liberal order and the brash businessman who rose to power on a populist tide.
  • (3) I was bookish and spectacled and I was really quite glad to move to a different sort of school."
  • (4) I’m a writer, a bookish soul, so style preoccupies me.
  • (5) "I guess David was the more bookish and Ed the more outgoing, but that's about it."
  • (6) I, for one, don't want to see the high streets of the future without their bookshops, which offer places to browse, community events, and bookish chat.
  • (7) My parents weren't that bookish, but they were devoted readers to me.
  • (8) It is a sad day when even the Booker is afraid to be bookish … People want to think.
  • (9) The Tsar of Love and Techno is published 6 October by Knopf Facebook Twitter Pinterest Garth Risk Hallberg, City on Fire Photograph: Publicity City on Fire, by Garth Risk Hallberg The mere sale of this novel – for a reported $2m, following hard upon news that it had been optioned by the movie producer Scott Rudin – caused a kind of sensation in bookish circles.
  • (10) The group occupied the building in protest at plans to close the library temporarily, reopening it as a “bookish gym”, with paid leisure services run by social enterprise GLL, and a smaller selection of books for borrowers.
  • (11) In fact, she has written a coming-of-age story: an involving, evocative tale that will have bookish women everywhere shuddering in recognition.
  • (12) Bechdel was operating under the assumption that the book would be read by the same audience as her fortnightly comic strip, Dykes To Watch Out For, about the domestic lives of a group of bookish lesbians, which has been syndicated in several alternative American newspapers for more than two decades.
  • (13) They are just sleeping on cardboard, nothing to keep them warm.” Behbudi has the slightly distracted air of a bookish academic, but his appearance belies a life of insecurity that left little time for education.
  • (14) When me and my sister started writing a sitcom about teenagers, we wanted to write about all the most agonising and awful things about being a teenage girl, and my hopeless non-affair with Pavid Dreen became the basis of the first episode: there's nothing quite like a fat, bookish teenage girl who wants to be "noble", and accidentally says "forsooth!"
  • (15) He was a friendly, easy-going youth - some might call him lazy; he was certainly anything but bookish.
  • (16) There's an undeniably bookish quality to Sebald's writing; despite his originality, some of his effects come from other writers.
  • (17) Griswold still finds that 15% or more of kids are deeply bookish.
  • (18) The air of clubbishness, a cool, bookish intimacy, persists.
  • (19) The suave, silver-fox proprietor, Antony Farrell, keeps the press running with the aid of an ever-rotating crew of young interns, giving the premises the vibe of an affable and bookish Bond villain’s lair.
  • (20) Labour’s bookish new leader has nothing personal against the country’s largest landowners.

Formal


Definition:

  • (n.) See Methylal.
  • (a.) Belonging to the form, shape, frame, external appearance, or organization of a thing.
  • (a.) Belonging to the constitution of a thing, as distinguished from the matter composing it; having the power of making a thing what it is; constituent; essential; pertaining to or depending on the forms, so called, of the human intellect.
  • (a.) Done in due form, or with solemnity; according to regular method; not incidental, sudden or irregular; express; as, he gave his formal consent.
  • (a.) Devoted to, or done in accordance with, forms or rules; punctilious; regular; orderly; methodical; of a prescribed form; exact; prim; stiff; ceremonious; as, a man formal in his dress, his gait, his conversation.
  • (a.) Having the form or appearance without the substance or essence; external; as, formal duty; formal worship; formal courtesy, etc.
  • (a.) Dependent in form; conventional.
  • (a.) Sound; normal.

Example Sentences:

  • (1) We present the analysis both formally and in geometric terms and show how it leads to a general algorithm for the optimization of NMR excitation schemes.
  • (2) If Lagarde had been placed under formal investigation in the Tapie case, it would have risked weakening her position and further embarrassing both the IMF and France by heaping more judicial worries on a key figure on the international stage.
  • (3) The appointment of the mayor of London's brother, who formally becomes a Cabinet Office minister, is one of a series of moves designed to strengthen the political operation in Downing Street and to patch up the prime minister's frayed links with the Conservative party.
  • (4) Eleven per cent of the courses that responded provided no formal substance misuse training.
  • (5) However ITV deny that any approach or offer, formal or informal, has been made.
  • (6) The wives and girlfriends who were originally invited to accompany their playing partners on the World Cup tour have had their invitations formally rescinded.
  • (7) This formalism allows resolution of the intrinsic protein folding-unfolding parameters (enthalpy, entropy, and heat capacity changes) as well as the ligand interaction parameters (binding stoichiometry, enthalpy, entropy, and heat capacity changes).
  • (8) This demonstrates a considerable range in surgeons' attitudes to day surgery despite its formal endorsement by professional bodies, and identifies what are perceived as the organizational and clinical barriers to its wider introduction.
  • (9) Children as young as 18 months start by sliding on tiny skis in soft supple boots, while over-threes have more formal lessons in the snow playground.
  • (10) Britain and France formally announced this week they would abstain, along with Portugal and Bosnia.
  • (11) After the formal PIRC inquiry was triggered by the lord advocate, Frank Mulholland, Bayoh’s family said police gave them five different accounts of what had happened before eventually being told late on Sunday afternoon how he died.
  • (12) Instituut voor Sociale Geneeskunde, Vrije Universiteit (The process of directing self-care, informal and formal assistance).
  • (13) He was greeted in Kyoto by Abe, with the men dispensing with the formal handshake that starts most head of governments' greetings in favour of a full body hug.
  • (14) A formal notion of relatability is defined, specifying which physically given edges leading into discontinuities can be connected to others by interpolated edges.
  • (15) Formal audits of the continuing medical education activities of physicians licensed in Michigan were undertaken to assess compliance with a law mandating participation in 150 hours of continuing medical education each 3 years.
  • (16) His central focus was on the neutrality of government rules – or what he called (on p117), "the Rule of Law, in the sense of the rule of formal law, the absence of legal privileges of particular people designated by authority" – not the elimination of government rules: "The liberal argument is in favor of making the best possible use of the forces of competition as a means of coordinating human efforts, not an argument for leaving things just as they are."
  • (17) The Washington Post report is the latest in a flurry of unattributed articles suggesting that the Justice Department is unlikely to take up formal charges against Assange.
  • (18) The government will formally begin the sale of Royal Mail on Thursday by announcing its intention to float the 497-year-old postal service on the London Stock Exchange.
  • (19) His formal entry into the contest marks a key moment in the nascent race for the Republican nomination, which is set to be the most congested presidential primary either party has held since 1976.
  • (20) The formal results of the analysis show that when psychological considerations are incorporated into a state-dependent utility model, the normative results customarily obtained concerning value-of-life need to be qualified.