Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English
Wiktionary
a. Of a book, etc., showing signs of frequent or heavy use; worn; well used.
Usage examples of "well-thumbed".
Ghaffar, a middle-aged Paki, was a studious-looking sort wearing one of those white cloth doodads wound around his head, who had evidently been reading one of two well-thumbed leather-bound books.
Everybody, but everybody Comes In dead-eyed and puke-white and with their face hanging down around their knees and with a well-thumbed firearm-and-ordnance mail-order catalogue kept safe and available at home, map-wise, for when this last desperate resort of hugs and cliches turns out to be just happy horseshit, for you.
But we cannot do so with propriety: facts, stern, untoward, cruel facts, stare us in the face, and would make even the novelist blush, were he, in total disregard of well-thumbed history, to attempt so very false a fiction.
The archivist was silent while Tiamak looked for the well-thumbed pages that described Ineluki creating Sor row in the forges below Asu'a.
Rummaging among the bower bird's nest of religious paraphernalia, Carlton selected for himself a foot-long cross of polished wood, the worn and well-thumbed Gideon Bible, and of course the kitchen knife.
I took a dinner menu and an eyebrow pencil and a well-thumbed booklet of interplanetary rates and schedules, shoved my straw boater back on my head, and once more tried to make my bankroll add up to a trip to Luna before October.
These latter necessaries hung upon the walls, which, in that portion of the establishment devoted to the lady of the caravan, were ornamented with such gayer and lighter decorations as a triangle and a couple of well-thumbed tambourines.