Bookie and Make Book

It is Triple Crown time again, so here is my annual celebration of it. From a very heavy, unabridged, go-to “The Random House Dictionary of the English Language” (1966), the definition of bookmaker, and thence “bookie,” is “one who makes a business of accepting the bets of others on the outcome of sports contests, esp. of horse races.” To “make book” follows directly as “to take bets and give odds.” Not the stuff of traditional Libraries, but how did we get to this usage from the word “book”? The on-line Oxford English Dictionary says that the earliest usage of the word “bookie” dates to 1787, in the writing of a John Skinner, songwriter and ecclesiastic historian. It is a shortened version of the word “bookmaker.” The bookmaker in this instance keeps a book record of bets made. From …