textbook
Americannoun
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textbooks
plural
adjective
noun
Other Word Forms
Derived Forms
Inflected Forms
Nouns
Etymology
Origin of textbook
Explanation
A textbook is an informational book that you use specifically for a class at school. Your biology textbook might be so heavy that you dread lugging it to class. Textbooks are manuals written for instruction in a subject, rather than books you might read for fun. Today many students read textbooks in electronic form, rather than as bound hardcovers. Starting around the 19th century (with easy access to printing and standardized education in many parts of the world), textbooks became a common educational tool. Earlier, a textbook was a name for "a book with wide spaces between the lines."
Vocabulary lists containing textbook
Reading: Informational - Middle School
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Reading: Informational - Introductory
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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:
Modern computational methods now allow researchers to examine molecular structures and electron distributions in ways that were not possible when many textbook explanations were first developed.
From Science Daily ● Sep. 14, 2026
Rather than providing the usual textbook answer, he instead gave a colourfully uncomplimentary – and unprintable - description of his own first-half performance.
From BBC ● Aug. 28, 2026
He is a longtime Harvard professor and author of a bestselling economics textbook.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Aug. 21, 2026
The company’s relationships with teachers and textbook publishers are a key advantage, he added.
From MarketWatch ● Aug. 18, 2026
Mr. Fabian reads from the social studies textbook, his words blending together in a long yawn: colonialismrevolutionindependencebillofrights.
From "Muffled" by Jennifer Gennari
On many campuses, there are campaigns either to make textbooks free or to replace textbooks with “digital resources.”
From The Wall Street Journal ● Aug. 26, 2026
Some say customers aren’t exactly paying for innovation, but rather for decades of familiarity on the educator side — along with textbooks that build the calculators into their curricula.
From MarketWatch ● Aug. 18, 2026
The idea became highly influential in evolutionary biology and eventually appeared widely in biology textbooks.
From Science Daily ● Aug. 15, 2026
He rushed back from a farmhouse holiday with friends, scrambling to retrieve the notes and textbooks he had already given to younger students in case he had to sit the exam again.
From BBC ● Aug. 2, 2026
“All us teachers, I mean. I’m not the only one dealing with textbooks falling apart or supplies disappearing. You know Mr. Roberts? Science department?”
From "Anger Is a Gift" by Mark Oshiro
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.
