notebook
Americannoun
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They checked the sergeant's notebook for clues to his whereabouts.
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a book or binder of blank, often ruled, pages on which to write, especially one used by students to take notes in class.
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a book in which promissory notes are entered, registered, recorded, etc.
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Digital Technology. a small, lightweight laptop computer.
noun
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a book for recording notes or memoranda
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a book for registering promissory notes
Other Word Forms
Noun Inflected Forms
Etymology
Origin of notebook
Explanation
A notebook is a blank book that you can write in. Students often carry notebooks, where they can take notes (and doodle). The pages in a notebook are often lined, so that you can write neatly. You might keep one for writing to-do lists or thoughts (like a journal), or your notebooks might all be large binders full of class notes and math problems. Notebooks can be bound like books, or with a spiral metal or plastic binding, or consist of loose pages in a three-ring binder. Another, newer kind of notebook is a slim, lightweight laptop computer.
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:
Holding her camera and notebook, archaeologist Micheline Kurdi walked through the ruins to document the site's state and plan the first "quick interventions" to restore it, she told AFP.
From Barron's ● Jul. 20, 2026
In Sonny’s notebook, every observation is a moral choice, a mini-essay about what proper conduct is, what failure is, how you might get past it, and what our responsibilities to others might be.
From Los Angeles Times ● Jul. 14, 2026
Gerry keeps a secret notebook in which he documents his assignments.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Jul. 9, 2026
The specimen was originally collected on James Ross Island and its discovery was recorded in a field notebook kept by geologist Dr Mike Thomson.
From BBC ● Jun. 29, 2026
I tried to pass the time by writing in my notebook about Pet-O-Rama and my days at Ms. Mac’s apartment.
From "The World According to Humphrey" by Betty G. Birney
The exhibition also includes an old photograph of the coastal city of Tyre, a black-and-white video of Nabatieh, and notebooks in which visitors wrote down their memories of the south.
From Barron's ● Jul. 19, 2026
The high-school dropout read urban crime fiction, then wrote his own stories longhand in notebooks.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Jun. 16, 2026
Field notebooks recently recovered from a late paleontologist have provided the crucial missing details researchers needed to complete a study of a remarkable fossil fish discovered nearly three decades ago.
From Science Daily ● Jun. 12, 2026
He is a student in a lifelong learning program at UCLA; he takes extensive notes in notebooks and in the margins of his many books.
From Los Angeles Times ● Jun. 8, 2026
When the bell rings, we stuff our notebooks and pencils into our backpacks and file out of the classroom door.
From "King and the Dragonflies" by Kacen Callender
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.
