codex
Americannoun
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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
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.
Spend a few hours in Claude Code or Codex.
From Slate • May 24, 2026
OpenAI said in its blog post it added the instruction to curb Codex and its underlying model's "strange affinity for goblins".
From BBC • Apr. 30, 2026
The e-commerce giant said on Tuesday that OpenAI models and its Codex tool will be available from Amazon cloud.
From Barron's • Apr. 28, 2026
The company’s coding tool Codex is growing quickly in popularity, and it is shaving costs by cutting other projects such as its video-generation app Sora.
From The Wall Street Journal • Apr. 28, 2026
After my previous experience on the horns I had familiarized myself with the Rerum Codex, the University’s official rules.
From "The Name of the Wind" by Patrick Rothfuss
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.
