† 1. A book containing copies of documents, accounts, etc. Obs.
1557. Order of Hospitalls, F vij. The Thresorers accompt-booke and the Thresorers privat Coppie-book all made in … time for the Audite.
1660. Willsford, Scales Comm., 206. Books usually kept in great Merchants Accounts…. A Copy-book of charges at home, or Forreign accounts … with a breviate of Receipts or Acquittances.
2. A book in which copies are written or printed for pupils to imitate.
1588. Shaks., L. L. L., V. ii. 42. Faire as a text B. in a Coppie booke.
1612. Brinsley, Lud. Lit., iv. (1627), 30. Instead of setting of copies … let every one have a little copie booke fastened to the top of his writing booke.
1657. Cocker (title) A Copy Book of Fair Writing.
1762. Borlase, in Phil. Trans., LII. 510. Another part of the same flash … tore and dispersed the copy-books of the scholars.
1885. J. Payn, Talk of Town, I. 41. Words of wisdom, but … cut and dried, like proverbs from a copy-book.
Mod. Vere Foster’s Drawing Copy-books.
b. attrib. (Applied allusively to maxims of a conventional or commonplace character.)
1848. Kingsley, Saint’s Trag., II. x. A few copy-book headings about benevolence, and industry, and independence.
1883. G. Lloyd, Ebb & Flow, I. 4. Well provided with stores of copy-book morality against the possible emergencies of life.
1886. J. K. Jerome, Idle Thoughts (ed. 58), 28. It is easy to recite copy-book maxims against its [vanity’s] sinfulness.
