textbook

text +‎ book

• IPA^(key): /ˈtɛkst.bʊk/

• Audio (US)

  (file)

textbook (plural textbooks)

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

• text-book (obsolete)

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, chapter 2, in Nineteen Eighty-Four‎, part three:

     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, “The Cohabitation Experimentation”, in The Big Bang Theory, season 10, episode 4, spoken by Bernadette (Melissa Rauch):

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

   • 2020 December 11, Patricia Mazzei, “A State Scientist Questioned Florida’s Virus Data. Now Her Home’s Been Raided.”, in The New York Times‎, →ISSN:

     “That’s textbook bad security practice, and this is an example of why — it’s cumbersome to revoke access and hard to attribute actions to the responsible people,” said J. Alex Halderman, a computer science and engineering professor at the University of Michigan.

   • 2022 July 27, Dr Joseph Brennan, “Bridge disasters that spanned an Empire”, in RAIL, number 962, page 58:

     In Scotland, the Tay [bridge] fell (in part) as textbook testament to the brittleness of cast iron.

• For quotations using this term, see Citations:textbook.