codex
Americannoun
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codices
plural
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a quire of manuscript pages held together by stitching: the earliest form of book, replacing the scrolls and wax tablets of earlier times.
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a manuscript volume, usually of an ancient classic or the Scriptures.
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Archaic. a code; book of statutes.
noun
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a volume, in book form, of manuscripts of an ancient text
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obsolete a legal code
Other Word Forms
Noun Inflected Forms
Etymology
Origin of codex
1575–85; < Latin cōdex, caudex tree-trunk, book (formed originally from wooden tablets); cf. code
Explanation
A codex is an ancient book made of stacked, hand-written pages. A historian might study a medieval codex full of beautiful calligraphy and illustrations decorated with gold leaf. The ancient Romans invented the codex. When the codex first appeared as a way to bind a manuscript, it was a great improvement over previous methods. One of these was the scroll, a long roll of paper, and another was a wax tablet. Codex is a Latin word used to mean "book of laws," although it's literally "tree trunk." The plural of codex is codices.
Vocabulary lists containing codex
Aztec, Maya, and Inca Empires - Introductory
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Aztec, Maya, and Inca Empires - Middle School and High School
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An Indigenous Peoples' History of the United States
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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.
See Examples For:
One can’t possibly grasp the closeness two people share until they’ve experienced firsthand the joy and indescribable pain that come with the kind of enmeshment written in fate’s codex.
From Salon ● Sep. 28, 2026
Ancient Aztec communities from the pre-Columbian period of Mesoamerica had a rich mythological codex that was also part of their ritual and sacrificial ceremonies.
From Science Daily ● Nov. 19, 2024
He has now dispatched an army of stabby crab-like aliens through portals to retrieve the Eddie-Venom codex and free himself.
From Los Angeles Times ● Oct. 24, 2024
The codex was bought by the University of Mississippi where it remained until 1981, and was acquired several times before being purchased by Norwegian manuscript collector Dr Martin Schøyen in 1988.
From BBC ● Apr. 4, 2024
The drawing at left, from a sixteenth-century codex, is a winter- count-like depiction of a year dominated by smallpox; two men lie dying or dead, their bodies spotted with pustules.
From "1491" by Charles C. Mann
The temporary exchange of the two codices was agreed by Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum and her French counterpart, Emmanuel Macron, during a visit by the latter to Mexico last year.
From BBC ● Sep. 17, 2026
They also used codices, book-like records drawn on bark paper that combined both images and pictograms.
From Textbooks ● Apr. 19, 2023
Starting from this perspective, Dr. Ezcurra and his co-authors present a calendar model that matches the location of the sun on the horizon to festivities cited in Mesoamerican codices.
From New York Times ● Dec. 13, 2022
Authors penned chivalric romances and heroic tales of knights battling fantastic monsters and traveling to exotic lands—think, Beowulf and King Arthur—by hand onto parchment and eventually paper codices.
From Science Magazine ● Feb. 16, 2022
The tlamatini, who “himself was writing and wisdom,” was expected to write and maintain the codices and live in a way that set a moral example.
From "1491" by Charles C. Mann
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Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
