Pl. albums. [a. L. album a blank tablet for entries, subst. use of neut. sing. of adj. alb-us white. At first used in Eng. professedly as a Latin word, and so inflected: see in albo below, as we say in toto.]
1. Rom. Antiq. A tablet on which the prætor’s edicts and other public notices were recorded for public information; afterwards extended to other lists.
1753. Chambers, Cycl. Supp., s.v., The high-priest entered the chief transactions of each year into an album, or table, which was hung up in his house for the public use.
1868. Smith, Dict. Antiq., s.v., The album was so called because it was either a white material, or a material whitened.
2. A blank book in which to insert autographs, memorial verses, original drawings, or other souvenirs. According to Johnson ‘a book in which foreigners have long been accustomed to insert the autographs of celebrated people.’
1651. Reliq. Wotton (1672), 30. Was requested by Christopher Flecamore to write some sentence in his Albo. Ibid., 69. In his Album of Friends after the German custome.
1652. Benlowe, Theoph. Who in Loves Albo are enrol’d Unutterable Joyes behold.
1757. Chesterf., Lett., 319, IV. 87. I do not mean a German album, stuffed with people’s names and Latin sentences.
1848. Thackeray, Van. Fair, lxiii. (1853), 533. Grignac … made caricatures of Tapeworm in all the Albums of the place.
3. ‘A book at public places in which visitors enter their names.’ Webster. (This in England is called a Visitors’ Book.)
1775. W. Mason, Gray (Jod.). I remember … to have seen at the convent of the Grande Chartreuse an album of this fashion; and was invited to insert my name in it, as a foreigner.
1822. J. Flint, Lett. fr. Amer., 294. In the album kept at one of these [taverns] … a hundred folio pages had been written with names within five months.
4. A book for reception of photographic cartes and views, or of postage-stamps, crests, or other things which are collected and preserved; a scrap-book.
1859. All Y. Round, No. 30. 79. An album full of photographs.
1878. Paper & Print. Jrnl., XXV. 11. A still greater novelty is an album containing twenty-four Welsh costumes.
