codex means an early manuscript book. Lexicurio rates it Rare gem — a strength score of 79 out of 100.
codex is pronounced /ˈkəʊdɛks/.
Why “codex” is a great word
CODEX — [Noun] An ancient manuscript volume of pages bound together in book form, or an official list of medicinal substances. From Latin cōdex, a variant of caudex ("tree trunk, block of wood, book"), with the sense of a wooden tablet for writing, evolving to denote a bound book. Unlike a scroll, which unfurls a continuous, unwieldy narrative, or a code, which is an abstract system of laws, a codex is a contained, tangible world. It is the cool heft of vellum gathered between wooden boards, the deliberate rustle of a turned page breaking a monastic silence, and the profound authority of a pharmacopoeia's sealed knowledge—a technology that made thought portable, private, and permanent. This humble invention transformed knowledge from a stream to be followed into a settled country to be explored.
Etymology
Borrowed from Latin cōdex, variant form of caudex (“tree trunk, book, notebook”); compare caudex (in botany). Doublet of code.
noun
- An early manuscript book.
- A book bound in the modern manner, by joining pages, as opposed to a rolled scroll.“From its inception, the index has provided a window onto the history of the book, for it took the advent of a particular type of book — the codex, a sheaf of pages fastened along one edge — to make an index a practical possibility. The progenitor of the modern bound book, the codex gradually supplanted the scroll, a medium inimical to the indexer’s art.”
- An official list of medicines and medicinal ingredients.