Word.ws English Dictionary

songbook

songbook noun: a book containing songs.

Noun

songbook (plural songbooks)

  1. A book containing songs.
    • Some of the young folks asked Mrs. Long could they have a sing at her home that Sunday afternoon; she readily agreed, telling them to come early, bring their songbooks, and have a good sing.2002, Martha Mizell Puckett, Hoyle B. Puckett, Memories of a Georgia Teacher: Fifty Years in the Classroom, page 198
    • In uncritical homage to the heyday of Hollywood musicals, Branagh sets the action in a kind of soundstagey Oxbridge (wittily designed by Tim Harvey) and at crucial moments has his cast spin on their heels and croon American songbook standards by Porter, Kern, Gershwin and company instead of...2005, Andrew Dickson, The Rough Guide to Shakespeare: The Plays, the Poems, the Life, London: Rough Guides, →ISBN, page 191
  2. A repertoire of songs.
    • the great American songbook

Forms of songbook

pluralsongbooks

Plural of songbook: songbooks

Origin of songbook

From Middle English song boke, from Old English sangbōc (“a music book; songbook”), equivalent to song + book. Compare Saterland Frisian Songbouk (“songbook”), West Frisian sjongboek (“songbook”), Dutch zangboek (“songbook”), German Low German Sangbook (“songbook; hymnbook; hymnal”), German Gesangbuch (“songbook; hymnbook; hymnal”), Danish sangbog (“songbook”), Swedish sångbok (“songbook”), Faroese songbók (“songbook”), Icelandic söngbók (“songbook”).

Phrases with songbook

Questions about songbook

What does songbook mean?
Songbook means a book containing songs.
What part of speech is songbook?
Songbook is a noun.
What is the plural of songbook?
The plural of songbook is songbooks.

Words near songbook in the dictionary

  1. song-craft
  2. Songbei
  3. songbird
  4. songbirdlike
  5. songbirds
  6. songbook
  7. songbooks
  8. Songbu
  9. songbun
  10. songburst
  11. songbursts

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: songbook (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Vealhurl-songbook.wav.

Cite this entry: “songbook.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/songbook. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.