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Glite Dictionary
💸 Betting business 📚 Making books
bookmaking

bookmaking

6 5.2
A person or business that takes bets on events and pays winners
  • noun
  • /ˈbʊkˌmeɪkɪŋ/
translation icon : apuestas
  • Robert De Niro yearns to get closer to his son (Cooper), as he tries to keep the family afloat with his compulsive bookmaking.
  • bookmaking operation
  • illegal bookmaking
  • bookmaking business

Examples

  • It's New York, where gambling is illegal and bookmaking is a felony.

    Lay the Favorite (2012)

  • See, Connie, every year, the mob rakes in two and a half billion from football bookmaking.

    Fiction book (1991)

  • So, what made you guys decide to do this bookmaking thing?

    Bookies (2003)

  • I invited you here to talk about a bookmaking operation, not the restaurant.

    Dinner Rush (2000)

  • ...we're out of the bookmaking business.

    Dinner Rush (2000)

  • Uh, sources are telling us that this, uh, place doubles as a bookmaking operation.

    Dinner Rush (2000)

  • He and some of his friends are running a bookmaking operation.

    Bookies (2003)

  • Bookmaking is forbidden on campus.

    Runner Runner (2013)

  • They're a worldwide bookmaking operation handling hundreds of millions of dollars a year in illegal sports betting.

    Molly's Game (2017)

  • He started a new bookmaking business to capitalize on the growing interest in sports betting.

Surface Forms

bookmaking singular
bookmakings plural

Morphology

bookmaking = book + make + ing

Although the form looks like book + make + -ing, the gambling sense depends on the specialized bookmaker/book-keeping tradition and is not predictable from the visible parts for most learners.

Etymology

Bookmaking comes from the idea of keeping a book — a 'record' of bets — and making that list, so a bookmaker is literally someone who keeps the book for bets and pays winners, which explains the gambling meaning.