Emily Dickinson Lexicon

BOOK, n. [Sax. boc, a book and the beech-tree; Goth. boka; Icelandic, book; D. boek, a book, and the mast of beech; beuke, a beech-tree; G. buch, a book, and buche, a beech; Dan. bog; Sw. bok; Russ. buk; Gypsy, buchos. Like the Latin liber, book, signifies primarily bark and beech, the tree being probably named from its bark.]

1. A general name of every literary composition which is printed; but appropriately, a printed composition bound; a volume. The name is given also to any number of written sheets when bound or sewed together, and to a volume of blank paper, intended for any species of writing, as for memorandums, for accounts, or receipts.
2. A particular part of a literary composition; a division of a subject in the same volume.
3. A volume or collection of sheets in which accounts are kept; a register of debts and credits, receipts and expenditures, &c. In books, in kind remembrance; in favor. I was so much in his books, that at his decease he left me his lamps. – Addison. Without book, by memory; without reading; without notes; as, a sermon was delivered without book. This phrase is used also in the sense of without authority; as, a man asserts without book.