noun
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a page bearing a religious text or the alphabet, held in a frame with a thin window of flattened cattle horn over it
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any elementary primer
Etymology
Origin of hornbook
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
Political Self-Portrait is a kind of rebel's hornbook, full of references to the doctrines and deeds of those who Wheelwright felt have most signally helped�and hindered�truth-telling and liberty.
From Time Magazine Archive
Like it or not, the American high school cannot return to the hornbook and the birch rod.
From Time Magazine Archive
“Then if you’ll try to meet me there this afternoon, I'll bring you a hornbook and I’ll teach you to read some of it. Will you come?”
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.
