codex

The word codex originates from the Latin 'caudex' or 'codex', which literally meant a tree trunk or a block of wood. This evolved to refer specifically to wooden tablets coated with wax, which were bound together to form the earliest type of book, replacing the scroll. The semantic shift from a physical wooden block to a bound book captures the technological innovation in ancient writing materials. In modern English, it retains its core meaning of an ancient manuscript book and has extended to authoritative lists, such as a pharmacopoeia.

Structure: cod (block of wood, book) + ex (suffix) cod is from Latin 'caudex' or 'codex', meaning a block of wood, a tree trunk, or a wooden tablet for writing. ex is a Latin suffix often used to form nouns.