# bookmark

Pronunciation: US say "BUUK-mahrk" /ˈbʊk.mɑɹk/; UK say "BUUK-mahk" /ˈbʊk.mɑːk/

## Noun

1. A strip of material placed between pages to mark where you stopped reading in a book.
   - Simple: A small strip of paper or other material that holds your place in a book.
   - _A leather bookmark dangled from the top of the hymnal._
   - _She kept losing her bookmarks somewhere in the thicker volumes._
2. A saved record of a website or file's address that works as a shortcut back to it.
   - Simple: A saved link that lets you quickly return to a website or file.
   - _Her browser held hundreds of bookmarks she rarely revisited._
   - _He added a bookmark to the documentation page for quick reference._
4. In a database, a pointer held in a nonclustered index that locates a row in a clustered index or in a heap table.
   - Simple: In a database, a link that points from one index to the exact spot where a row of data is stored.
   - _The query engine follows the bookmark from the index to the actual data row._
   - _Without a covering index, the system resolves each match through a bookmark._

## Verb

3. To save a record of a website or file's address so you can return to it later.
   - Simple: To save a link to a website or file so you can open it again quickly.
   - _Researchers often bookmark dozens of sources during a single project._
   - _He bookmarked the tutorial so he could follow along the next day._

## Origin

From Middle English, formed from 'book' plus 'mark', with cognates in Danish 'bogmærke', Swedish 'bokmärke', Norwegian 'bokmerke', and Icelandic 'bókamerki'. It replaced the non-native Old English 'æstel', which came through Old Irish 'astal' from Latin 'hastula' meaning 'little spear or splint'.

Source: DictionaryAI, https://dictionaryai.com/define/bookmark (written from Wiktionary data, CC BY-SA 4.0: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/).