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hornbook

American  
[hawrn-book] / ˈhɔrnˌbʊk /

noun

  1. a leaf or page containing the alphabet, religious materials, etc., covered with a sheet of transparent horn and fixed in a frame with a handle, formerly used in teaching children to read.

  2. a primer or book of rudiments.

hornbook British  
/ ˈhɔːnˌbʊk /

noun

  1. a page bearing a religious text or the alphabet, held in a frame with a thin window of flattened cattle horn over it

  2. any elementary primer

"Collins English Dictionary — Complete & Unabridged" 2012 Digital Edition © William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd. 1979, 1986 © HarperCollins Publishers 1998, 2000, 2003, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2009, 2012

Etymology

Origin of hornbook

First recorded in 1580–90; horn + book

Example Sentences

Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.

Still, as Ritholtz and Invictus point out, it’s hornbook economics that the proper way to deal with non-seasonally adjusted figures is to use year-to-year comparisons, which obviate seasonal trends.

From Los Angeles Times • Jun. 12, 2024

In the early 1600s, a child’s first book in New England was called a hornbook, a board in the shape of a paddle upon which was written the Lord’s Prayer and the alphabet.

From Washington Times • Feb. 24, 2018

Like it or not, the American high school cannot return to the hornbook and the birch rod.

From Time Magazine Archive

He has produced a combined morality play and grimoire, or devil's hornbook, in which every creature is experienced with hilarious or dreadful concreteness.

From Time Magazine Archive

At the bottom of one of them, she had remembered, was a little hornbook.

From "The Witch of Blackbird Pond" by Elizabeth George Speare

Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023

Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.