Book n.
 1. A collection of sheets of paper, or similar material, blank, written, or printed, bound together; commonly, many folded and bound sheets containing continuous printing or writing.
 Note: ☞ When blank, it is called a blank book. When printed, the term often distinguishes a bound volume, or a volume of some size, from a pamphlet.
 Note: ☞ It has been held that, under the copyright law, a book is not necessarily a volume made of many sheets bound together; it may be printed on a single sheet, as music or a diagram of patterns.
 2. A composition, written or printed; a treatise.
    A good book is the precious life blood of a master spirit, embalmed and treasured up on purpose to a life beyond life.   --Milton.
 3. A part or subdivision of a treatise or literary work; as, the tenth book of “Paradise Lost.”
 4. A volume or collection of sheets in which accounts are kept; a register of debts and credits, receipts and expenditures, etc.; -- often used in the plural; as, they got a subpoena to examine our books.
 Syn: -- ledger, leger, account book, book of account.
 5. Six tricks taken by one side, in the game of bridge or whist, being the minimum number of tricks that must be taken before any additional tricks are counted as part of the score for that hand; in certain other games, two or more corresponding cards, forming a set.
 Note: ☞ Book is used adjectively or as a part of many compounds; as, book buyer, bookrack, book club, book lore, book sale, book trade, memorandum book, cashbook.
 Book account, an account or register of debt or credit in a book.
 Book debt, a debt for items charged to the debtor by the creditor in his book of accounts.
 Book learning, learning acquired from books, as distinguished from practical knowledge. “Neither does it so much require book learning and scholarship, as good natural sense, to distinguish true and false.” --Burnet.
 Book louse Zool., one of several species of minute, wingless insects injurious to books and papers. They belong to the Pseudoneuroptera.
 Book moth Zool., the name of several species of moths, the larvæ of which eat books.
 Book oath, an oath made on The Book, or Bible.
 The Book of Books, the Bible.
 Book post, a system under which books, bulky manuscripts, etc., may be transmitted by mail.
 Book scorpion Zool., one of the false scorpions (Chelifer cancroides) found among books and papers. It can run sidewise and backward, and feeds on small insects.
 Book stall, a stand or stall, often in the open air, for retailing books.
 Canonical books. See Canonical.
 In one's books, in one's favor.  “I was so much in his books, that at his decease he left me his lamp.” --Addison.
 To bring to book. (a) To compel to give an account. (b) To compare with an admitted authority. “To bring it manifestly to book is impossible.” --M. Arnold.
 by the book,  according to standard procedures; using the correct or usual methods.
 cook the books,  make fallacious entries in or otherwise manipulate a financial record book for fraudulent purposes.
 To curse by bell, book, and candle. See under Bell.
 To make book Horse Racing, to conduct a business of accepting or placing bets from others on horse races.
 To make a book Horse Racing, to lay bets (recorded in a pocket book) against the success of every horse, so that the bookmaker wins on all the unsuccessful horses and loses only on the winning horse or horses.
 off the books, not recorded in the official financial records of a business; -- usually used of payments made in cash to fraudulently avoid payment of taxes or of employment benefits.
 one for the book, one for the books, something extraordinary, such as a record-breaking performance or a remarkable accomplishment.
 To speak by the book, to speak with minute exactness.
 to throw the book at, to impose the maximum fine or penalty for an offense; -- usually used of judges imposing penalties for criminal acts.
 Without book. (a) By memory. (b) Without authority.
 to write the book, to be the leading authority in a field; -- usually used in the past tense; as, he's not just an average expert, he wrote the book.


 ca·non·ic ca·non·ic·al a.  Of or pertaining to a canon; established by, or according to, a canon or canons.  “The oath of canonical obedience.”
 Canonical books, or Canonical Scriptures, those books which are declared by the canons of the church to be of divine inspiration; -- called collectively the canon. The Roman Catholic Church holds as canonical several books which Protestants reject as apocryphal.
 Canonical epistles, an appellation given to the epistles called also general or catholic. See Catholic epistles, under Canholic.
 Canonical form Math., the simples or most symmetrical form to which all functions of the same class can be reduced without lose of generality.
 Canonical hours, certain stated times of the day, fixed by ecclesiastical laws, and appropriated to the offices of prayer and devotion; also, certain portions of the Breviary, to be used at stated hours of the day. In England, this name is also given to the hours from 8 a. m. to 3 p. m. (formerly 8 a. m. to 12 m.) before and after which marriage can not be legally performed in any parish church.
 Canonical letters, letters of several kinds, formerly given by a bishop to traveling clergymen or laymen, to show that they were entitled to receive the communion, and to distinguish them from heretics.
 Canonical life, the method or rule of living prescribed by the ancient clergy who lived in community; a course of living prescribed for the clergy, less rigid than the monastic, and more restrained that the secular.
 Canonical obedience, submission to the canons of a church, especially the submission of the inferior clergy to their bishops, and of other religious orders to their superiors.
 Canonical punishments, such as the church may inflict, as excommunication, degradation, penance, etc.
 Canonical sins Anc. Church., those for which capital punishment or public penance decreed by the canon was inflicted, as idolatry, murder, adultery, heresy.

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 can·on n.
 1. A law or rule.
 Or that the Everlasting had not fixed
 His canon 'gainst self-slaughter.   --Shak.
 2. Eccl. A law, or rule of doctrine or discipline, enacted by a council and confirmed by the pope or the sovereign; a decision, regulation, code, or constitution made by ecclesiastical authority.
    Various canons which were made in councils held in the second centry.   --Hook.
 3. The collection of books received as genuine Holy Scriptures, called the sacred canon, or general rule of moral and religious duty, given by inspiration; the Bible; also, any one of the canonical Scriptures. See Canonical books, under Canonical, a.
 4. In monasteries, a book containing the rules of a religious order.
 5. A catalogue of saints acknowledged and canonized in the Roman Catholic Church.
 6. A member of a cathedral chapter; a person who possesses a prebend in a cathedral or collegiate church.
 7. Mus. A musical composition in which the voices begin one after another, at regular intervals, successively taking up the same subject.  It either winds up with a coda (tailpiece), or, as each voice finishes, commences anew, thus forming a perpetual fugue or round.  It is the strictest form of imitation. See Imitation.
 8. Print. The largest size of type having a specific name; -- so called from having been used for printing the canons of the church.
 9. The part of a bell by which it is suspended; -- called also ear and shank.
 Note: [See Illust. of Bell.]
 10. Billiards See Carom.
 Apostolical canons. See under Apostolical.
 Augustinian canons, Black canons. See under Augustinian.
 Canon capitular, Canon residentiary, a resident member of a cathedral chapter (during a part or the whole of the year).
 Canon law. See under Law.
 Canon of the Mass R. C. Ch., that part of the mass, following the Sanctus, which never changes.
 Honorary canon, a canon6 who neither lived in a monastery, nor kept the canonical hours.
 Minor canon Ch. of Eng., one who has been admitted to a chapter, but has not yet received a prebend.
 Regular canon R. C. Ch., one who lived in a conventual community and followed the rule of St. Austin; a Black canon.
 Secular canon R. C. Ch., one who did not live in a monastery, but kept the hours.

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