hornbook

1 9.9

A small wooden board with letters covered by thin clear horn used to teach children to read

noun
/ˈhɔrnˌbʊk/

Archaic

: libro de enseñanza

Reading materials in the 15th through the 17th centuries were meant to indoctrinate, such as the hornbooks or lesson paddles that displayed the alphabet, verses from the Bible, or the like.

Examples

Elizabeth: A Hornbook Christmas. Book 3. Our Canadian Gift series. Anne Laurel Carter. Penguin Canada, 2005. 978-0-14-305011-7.

Academic text (2007)
9) Commercial outlines and hornbooks for overview purposes.

Blog text (20)
Moreover, Gover says, trust means much more in the Indian worldview than it does in the black-letter law of treatises and hornbooks.

Academic text (1999)
In the past, children learned their letters from a simple hornbook made of wood and covered in horn.
Teachers often used a hornbook to introduce young students to basic reading skills.
The hornbook featured the alphabet and short prayers to help children memorize important texts.

Synonyms

schoolbook

vshornbook

7 1.0

A book used by students at school or college to learn

is a small historical single sheet primer used to teach the basics of reading

Surface Forms

hornbook singular

hornbooks plural

Morphology

hornbook = horn + book (semi-transparent) = horn + book

The components 'horn' and 'book' are literal and identifiable, but the specialized historical meaning 'a child's primer protected with horn' is not fully predictable from the parts for an average learner.

Etymology

Hornbook is literally horn + book: teachers fixed a lesson sheet to a wooden board and covered it with a thin layer of 'horn' to protect it, so it looked like a small book for children. That's why hornbook means a simple primer used to teach the basics.