book

Definitions  ·  Examples  ·  Pronunciations  ·  Etymologies  ·  Related  ·  Statistics  ·  Comments (10)  · 
“
Mr. Loudon tells us that the word "book" comes from the German word buch_, which, in the first instance, means a beech, and was applied to books because the old German bookbinders used beech-wood instead of paste-board for the sides of thick volumes.

View all »
Definitions (106)

Toggle American Heritage definitions American Heritage Dictionary (33)

  1. noun A set of written, printed, or blank pages fastened along one side and encased between protective covers.
  2. noun A printed or written literary work.
  3. noun A main division of a larger printed or written work: a book of the Old Testament.
30 more from this dictionary »

Toggle Century definitions Century Dictionary (56)

Toggle GNU Webster definitions GNU Webster's 1913 (2)

Toggle WordNet definitions WordNet (15)

Toggle elsewhere links Elsewhere on the web

View all »
Examples (50)

  • But I picked it up and I started reading it and I thought, this book is amazing. —  Maira Kalman, the illustrated woman
  • You have one book which is entirely a trouble shooter for the setup only, while the other book is there for the features of the printer and how to work it. —  Epinions Recent Content for Home
  • If your book is an e-book, please feel free to participate too. —  LIT SOUP
  • To me, the last chapter in the book is the only place that contains anything that approaches some of the issues that were looming on the horizon as the book went to print. —  SeekingAlpha.com: Home Page
  • The accidental operation of buttons happens constantly, and it's uncomfortable to hold, which for a book is a very bad idea. —  NYT > Global Home
More examples »
 

Tags

Sign up or sign in to add tags.

Words tagged book

dictionary · go, dog, go · bird by bird · about · addon · admire · adobeair · stellaluna · in flagrante collecto · why paint cats · codex seraphinianus

More »

Stats

This word has been looked up 512 times.

stop updating
On Twitter

Photos from

flickr images

Add a related word »
Related

Roget's II Roget's II: The New Thesaurus

Allen's Allen's Synonyms and Antonyms

Used in the same context Used in the Same Context

work ·  paper ·  story ·  article ·  form ·  thing ·  volume ·  record

Used in the same contextWord Family

book:   booking ·  books ·  Book ·  booked
Roget's II: The New Thesaurus, Third Edition by the Editors of the American Heritage® Dictionary. Copyright © 2003, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

Etymologies (3)

Toggle American Heritage etymologies American Heritage Dictionary (1)

  1. Middle English bok, from Old English bōc; see bhāgo- in Indo-European roots.

Toggle Century etymologies Century Dictionary (2)

  1. Early modern English also boock, bock; from Middle English book, booke, boke, bok (northern buk, buke, later Scots buik, beuk, buke), from Anglo-Saxon bōc (plural bēc), feminine, a writing, record, charter, book, = Old Saxon bōk = OFries. bōk = Middle Dutch boeck, Dutch boek = Old Low German bōk, Low German book = Old High German buoh, Middle High German buoch, German buch, neuter, = Icelandic bōk, feminine, = Swedish bok = Danish bog, book, = Gothic (Moesogothic) bōka, feminine, bōk, neuter, a letter of the alphabet, plural a writing, document, book (cf. Old Bulgarian bukui, letter, in plural writing, bukvarĭ, abecedarium, Bulgarian Russian bukva, letter; from the Teutonic), orig. Teutonic *bōks, a leaf, sheet, or tablet for writing; usually referred, in spite of philological difficulties, to Anglo-Saxon (etc.) bōc (usually in deriv. form bēce, beech), cf. Anglo-Saxon bōcstæf, early modern English bokstaf (modern English as if *bookstaff or *buckstaff) (= Old Saxon bōkstaf = Middle Dutch boeckstaf, Dutch boekstaaf = Old High German buohstab, Middle High German buochstap, German buchstabe = Icelandic bōkstafr = Swedish bokstaf = Danish bogstav), a letter of the alphabet, literally apparently ‘beech-staff’ (from Anglo-Saxon bōc, beech, + stæf, staff), an interpretation resting on the fact, taken in connection with the similarity of form between Anglo-Saxon (etc.) bōc, book, and bōc, beech, that inscriptions were made on tablets of wood or bark, presumably often of beech (Venantius Fortunatus, about A. D. 600, refers to the writing of runes on tablets of ash; cf. Latin liber, book, liber, bark, Greek βιβλίον, book, βίβλος, book, papyrus: see liber, Bible, paper); but Anglo-Saxon bōcstæf, if literally ‘beech-staff,’ would hardly come to be applied to a single character inscribed thereon; it is rather ‘book-staff,’ i. e., a character employed in writing, from bōc, a writing, + stæf, a letter (cf. rūn-stæf, a runic character, stæf-cræft, grammar). The connection with beech remains uncertain: see beech, buck.
  2. from Middle English boken, from book, n.; cf. Anglo-Saxon bōcian, give by charter (= OFries. bōkia = Icelandic bōka), from bōc, book, charter: see book, n.
 

Pronunciations
Record your own »
/bək/
by American Heritage

Charts
frequency chart

Bubble size: how much this word was used in a year

Bubble height: used more or less than expected, vs. all uses evenly distributed

You can expect to see this word several times a day.

Recently looked up

cogent · epic · extra · idealist · simper

Recent Favorites

pygopagus · sanglant · Astacus · sweetbread · qualms

Recent Pronunciations

Der dicke Dachdecker deckte dir dein Dach, drum dank dem dicken Dachdecker, dass der dicke Dachdecker dir dein Dach deckte. · weitläufig · und wenn sie nicht gestorben sind, so leben sie noch heute · redescheu · selbstverständlich