Yearbook

How to spell yearbook

8 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce yearbook

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does yearbook mean?

1. nounA book published once a year, especially one a school issues with student photographs and a record of the year's events.

Yearbook in a sentence

• She asked her classmates to sign her yearbook before graduation.

• The company released its statistical yearbook summarising the past twelve months.

Where does yearbook come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

Yearbook is a transparent English compound, joining two of the language's oldest native words. The first element, year, descends from the Old English gear, which named the annual cycle of seasons and shares ancestry with the German Jahr. The second element, book, comes from the Old English boc, a word once linked to the beech tree, since early runic inscriptions were sometimes cut into beech wood or bark. Put together, the compound began appearing in the 1500s and 1600s to describe a volume issued once a year recording events, statistics, or members. The familiar modern sense, a school or college publication of photographs and notes marking a single academic year, grew up in North America during the late nineteenth century. Because both parts are everyday words spelled exactly as they sound, the only thing to remember is that it is written as one solid word.

How the word is built

• year (Old English gear: a year)
• book (Old English boc: a written volume)