book: [OE] Book is widespread throughout the Germanic languages. German has buch, for example, Dutch bock, and Swedish bok. There point to a prehistoric Germanic *bōks, which was probably related to *bōkā ‘beech’, the connection being that the early Germanic peoples used beechwood tablets for writing runic inscriptions on. The original meaning of the word in Old English (bōc) was simply ‘written document or record’, but by the 9th century it had been applied to a collection of written sheets fastened together. => beech
