book-learning

• book learning

book-learning (uncountable)

1. Theoretical or academic knowledge acquired by reading books and/or through formal education, as opposed to practical or empirical knowledge of real life and the real world, gained through experience, or native as street smarts, common sense, or intuition.
   • 1841 February–November, Charles Dickens, “Barnaby Rudge”, in Master Humphrey’s Clock, volume III, London: Chapman & Hall, […], →OCLC, chapter 29, page 97:

     They are like some wise men, who, learning to know each planet by its Latin name, have quite forgotten such small heavenly constellations as Charity, Forbearance, Universal Love, and Mercy, […] and who, looking upward at the spangled sky, see nothing there but the reflection of their own great wisdom and book-learning.

   • 1892, Mark Twain [pseudonym; Samuel Langhorne Clemens], chapter XI, in The American Claimant, New York, N.Y.: Charles L[uther] Webster & Co., →OCLC, page 117:

     What you needed, I reckon, was less book learning and more bread-and-butter learning.

   • 1909 September, L[ucy] M[aud] Montgomery, “A Wedding at the Stone House”, in Anne of Avonlea, Boston, Mass.: L[ouis] C[oues] Page & Company, →OCLC, page 359:

     That's what college ought to be for, instead of for turning out a lot of B.A.s, so chock full of book-learning and vanity that there ain't room for anything else.

• Often used with the negative connotation that such knowledge is incomplete or unhelpful.

• book knowledge
• booklore
• reading knowledge

• book smart
• book-teaching