VIEWPOINT
Word to the wise
Love snuggling up with a book in bed at this time of year? Naturally, our columnist knows a word for that – and many other terms for bibliophiles
by SUSIE DENT
February is surely a time for hurkle-durkling. I’d love to leave that there and let you make up your own definition for this glorious-sounding word, but its real meaning is too good to ignore.
To hurkle-durkle is to stay beneath the covers long after it’s time to get up. Not only am I a hurkle-durkler, but there is more, because lingering in bed when you should be up and about is surely never complete without a book. It is a combination I love, and one which makes me, to borrow a less mellifluous but equally useful term, a ‘librocubicularist’: one who reads in bed.