endpaper

or end pa·per

[ end-pey-per ]

noun

, Bookbinding.

1. a sheet of paper, often distinctively colored or ornamented, folded vertically once to form two leaves, one of which is pasted flat to the inside of the front or back cover of a book, with the other pasted to the inside edge of the first or last page to form a flyleaf.

endpaper

/ ˈɛndˌpeɪpə /

noun

1. either of two leaves at the front and back of a book pasted to the inside of the board covers and the first leaf of the book to secure the binding

Word History and Origins

Origin of endpaper¹

First recorded in 1810–20

Example Sentences

With his endpaper paintings, Bradford demonstrated a talent for transmogrifying everyday objects by layering, sanding, gouging, scraping and tearing until they obliquely reflected his peculiar perspective on the world.

From New York Times

Something earlier and better should have been chosen, although a blown-up detail of “Heartland” makes a fabulous endpaper in the catalog.

From New York Times

The 1919 endpaper illustration Wyeth created for an edition of James Fenimore Cooper’s “The Last of the Mohicans” shows three men in a canoe, two of them Native Americans sitting with paddles and the other a white man with a rifle standing between them.

From Washington Post

In a northern land, in a time of new separations and yearnings, in a library grown suddenly dark, the hailstones beating against the windows, the marbled endpaper of a dusty leather-bound book would disturb: and it would be the hot noisy week before Christmas in the Tulsi store: the marbled patterns of old-fashioned balloons powdered with a rubbery dust in a shallow white box that was not to be touched.

From The New Yorker

Meggie folded up the endpaper and tied it to his collar.

From Literature