book [OE] The forerunners of the modern book would have been scrolls of papyrus or parchment, or engraved tablets—the first example of what we might recognize as a book came in Roman times. The word book goes back to Old English and has related forms in most of the other northern European languages of the time. Their ancestor was probably a word related to beech [OE], which would have been a wood that people used for engraving inscriptions. A bookmaker [ME in the literal sense] is someone who ‘makes a book’. Bookmakers [M19th] keep a record of bets made with different people, which was originally done in a memorandum book.