copybook

Meanings

1. 1
   noun

   historical: a school exercise book containing models of handwriting for a pupil to copy

   The child practiced each copperplate letter in a ruled copybook.

2. 2
   adj

   done perfectly according to established rules or serving as a conventional model

   The striker finished the move with a copybook header into the corner of the net.

3. 3
   adj

   conventional, stereotyped, or unoriginal

   The speech ended with a copybook appeal to duty and sacrifice.

A compound of copy + book, recorded from the sixteenth century. It first named a book of handwriting models or exercises. Because pupils copied ideal forms from it, attributive copybook later came to mean perfectly conventional or, in a critical sense, stereotyped and unoriginal.

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