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Discuss Email this Feedback RSS/XML Permalink A.Word.A.Day--hornbook This week's theme: words about books. hornbook (HORN-book) noun A primer. [From horn + book. In earlier times, a hornbook was a book containing the alphabet or other material for children. Though it would be stretching the definition of book by the present standard -- it had a wooden paddle with a handle that held a paper with learning material protected by the transparent layer of a cow's horn.] See pictures of hornbooks. -Anu Garg (garg wordsmith.org) "Christopher Buckley's novel 'Thank You for Smoking' is a manic send-up of your average tobacco lobbyist's life. It's also a hornbook of seamless flack-speak." Terry Tang; Smoking Out the Falsehoods of Tobacco's Brash Barons; The Seattle Times; Jun 7, 1996. X-Bonus The world is round and the place which may seem like the end may also be only the beginning. -George Baker (1877-1965)

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