English

Noun

textbook ‎(plural textbooks)

1. A coursebook, a formal manual of instruction in a specific subject, especially one for use in schools or colleges.

Translations

Adjective

textbook ‎(comparative more textbook, superlative most textbook)

1. Of or pertaining to textbooks or their style, especially in being dry and pedagogical; textbooky, textbooklike.
   • 1917, George Ransom Twiss, A textbook in the principles of science teaching‎

     It is likely to kill interest, and give both teacher and pupils a didactic, textbook attitude at the very beginning.

   • 2000, Okasha El Daly, Janet Starkey, Desert travellers: from Herodotus to T.E. Lawrence‎

     They are mentioned in his flat, textbook voice, alongside schoolroom descriptions of topography and assessments of economic significance.

   • 2004, David Henn, Old Spain and new Spain: the travel narratives of Camilo José Cela‎

     ...a kind of descriptive account or a social, geographical, anthropological, or historical commentary that may at times have a certain textbook tone to it.

2. Having the typical characteristics of some class of phenomenon, so that it might be included as an example in a textbook.
   • 1949, George Orwell, Nineteen Eighty-Four, Part Three, Chapter 2,

     All her rebelliousness, her deceit, her folly, her dirty-mindedness—everything has been burned out of her. It was a perfect conversion, a textbook case.

   • 1997, Alexander De Waal, Famine crimes: politics and the disaster relief industry in Africa‎

     It was a textbook case of how prompt government action could avert a major crisis.

   • 2003, Felice Picano, A house on the ocean, a house on the bay‎

     Every night had been clear and star-studded, the progression of the moon through its phases absolutely textbook, its dance with the planets visible in the ecliptic...

   • 2003, Robert J Art, Patrick M Cronin, The United States and coercive diplomacy‎

     In many ways the Korean nuclear crisis is a textbook example of coercive diplomacy — its strengths as well as the risks inherent in such a strategy.

   • 2016 October 10, Melissa Rauch as Bernadette, “The Cohabitation Experimentation”, in The Big Bang Theory, season 10, episode 4:

     It would help if you would stop telling me I have a textbook cervix.

Translations

Quotations

• For usage examples of this term, see Citations:textbook.